Counterpunch was kind enough to publish a long essay of mine that deconstructs the myths and lies used to continuously propel the war forward in Afghanistan. The essay utilizes US government, UN and major media sources, as well as many of my experiences, to argue for peace in Afghanistan. I am very happy with the reception this essay has received, most especially honored by its translation into Dari and Pashto by Afghan friends.

MARC STEINER:Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Marc Steiner. Great to have you with us today.

Seventeen years ago, the war started in Afghanistan. Seems like this is a war with no end. I remember interviewing Hamid Karzai as he was hiding in a cave just crossing the border back into Afghanistan. So many thought it was just, a war that we needed; it was a just war because Americans were revenging the 3000 deaths of 9/11. But doing so completely unaware of why the Taliban was in power in the first place, and how the United States was complicit in their coming to power in many ways, and in creating the likes of, yes, bin Laden.

Now, this week three Americans were killed, more in one day than any time this year. In retaliation, American and allied forces bombed a village they said was Taliban controlled. And later, when they learned that 30 civilians were killed, said they didn’t realize civilians were living there. Among the dead were 16 children. Then a British office was bombed in retaliation, and others were killed, one Brit and five Afghans. The UN reported that the number of civilian casualties from air attacks was higher in the first nine months of this year than any year since 2009.

It’s been a year since the Trump buildup of forces to Afghanistan and more money being spent. So what are we actually fighting for? What Is this war about? When will it end? How do we know where this war is taking us? These are questions many people are to ask themselves. The war’s cost 105,000 Afghan deaths, 7,000 American lives, hundreds of thousands wounded, and even more affected by the war. All this and the Taliban’s still strong enough to be on the verge of seizing power.

To help us wade through the latest news and what lies ahead is Matthew Hoh. A senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, former director of the Afghan Study Group, who was a Marine Corps officer in the Iraq war. And he 2009 he publicly resigned his position in the State Department in Afghanistan in opposition to the escalation of that war then, in 2009. He’s also a member of Veterans for Peace. And Matthew, welcome. Good to have you with us.

MATTHEW HOH:Hi, Marc. Thank you for having me on.

MARC STEINER:So I’m just curious about your reaction to the latest series of events, to start with, what’s at the top of the news. The killing of the American soldiers, the death of American soldiers, the retaliation to the bombing that killed 30 civilians, 16 children; then the next attack that took place at a British office. So I mean, every time we hear this news it seems like greater escalation, more deaths. What was your initial reaction to all this?

MATTHEW HOH:Well it’s the cycle of violence. I mean, this is, this is what’s occurred there in Afghanistan, not since 9/11, but since the 1970s. Something, as you mentioned in your introduction, we’ve been complicit in. I mean, we were–the United States–was funding the Mujahideen in Afghanistan prior to the Soviet Union invading Afghanistan. I mean, this has been going on for nearly 40 years now. And it is, it is a tragedy. It’s immense suffering. The numbers of casualties are undercounted. When an airstrike occurs like what we saw this week in Helmand and kills 30 people, we are aware of it. But smaller airstrikes, I could tell you this from my experience being there, smaller airstrikes, or airstrikes where the locals don’t alert the media, or the Afghan government doesn’t alert the media, go underreported, or undercounted.

So the idea that this is the most amount of civilians killed by air strikes since ’09 is certainly true. But I would hesitate to believe that that’s the actual number. The number is probably a much greater. And you see with this war a continual pattern, a continual pattern now of talks, a continual pattern of money and foreign troops being put into Afghanistan, a continual escalation of the war by the West and the Afghan government. And, of course, the response by the insurgency, most prominent among them what we call the Taliban, in a complete [an] appropriate response. Again, you’re in a cycle of violence here that, unless it’s broken–and when I mean broken, I mean the funding is cut off, the support is cut off for all parties so that the violence simply can’t occur anymore–it’s just going to continue to go on.

So we’re all kidding ourselves if we’re thinking that these talks, like this five-year plan which is the latest thing that’s coming out the Afghan government, peace will come in five years, we’re kidding ourselves if we think that’s going to make any real difference for the lives of the Afghan people.

MARC STEINER:This is a slight digression. I’m very curious, as you were speaking about this. I mean, so whether you were in Vietnam, whether you were in Afghanistan or Iraq, if you are a soldier fighting or whether you are a civilian working in that war, you get jaundiced pretty quickly about what’s going on around you. So the question is, I’m curious, from your time both as a soldier in Iraq–as a Marine, excuse me. Don’t want to insult you. [crosstalk]

MATTHEW HOH:I don’t, I’m not the guy that does the whole [inaudible]. I can’t do nearly the number of pullups I used to be able to do. I don’t [inaudible] get too concerned if people don’t get the right title.

MARC STEINER:OK, just checking. Just–I know how it is. But given your time in Afghanistan working with the State Department, I’m curious what is the tenor of the men and women working there, working on the, in the American sphere, about what we’re doing, what we’re really accomplishing, or not. And how you have to hide the reality from yourself, almost, to continue the work that you’re doing.

MATTHEW HOH:Yeah. I mean, I can–one thing I can tell you is that it has been nine years since I publicly resigned, and it was on the front page of the Washington Post, the Today Show, and everything. So it wasn’t–my resignation was pretty prominent. And you know, no reason of my own, really Forrest Gumped myself into that. But in the last nine years, the number of negative responses I’ve received from service members who are folks who served in Afghanistan I can count on my one hand. I have received hundreds, if not thousands, of positive responses from men and women who have been with the military, or with our civilian agencies in Afghanistan.

What you’re seeing is within the military, guys get the golden handcuffs. They get locked into their careers. They get locked into the fact that pay and benefits and everything in the military is pretty good right now. They get into the notion that I’m a professional soldier, or a professional Marine, or sailor, or airman. And so I don’t make the policy, I just enforce it. A lot of us would say, hey, that’s … You’re surrendering your soul and your conscience that way. So this zombie-like adherence to what’s occurring there, and looking for excuses, looking for ways to lie to yourself, looking for other metrics to determine whether or not what you’re doing is successful. I took my Marines to Iraq, or I took my Marines to Afghanistan, and only a couple were killed, or none were killed, or only a few were wounded, or–you know, trying to find ways to justify your actions. And that’s certainly what I did. I went three times to war, twice for Iraq and in Afghanistan. And it was–you become numb to that.

But when you get to a position, I think, where you’ve seen the realities of the policymaking, you’ve seen the realities of what we’re doing there, you’ve seen both conflicts–in my case both Iraq and Afghanistan–you see that neither is different. The only thing that matters is that the U.S. is occupying both countries. You’re going to have the same outcomes. In my case, where in Afghanistan I was meeting with the interlocutors, or actually Taliban themselves, and reporting back to the embassy and being told we’re not interested in negotiating, we’re not interested in finding peace, we’re interested in victory, we’re interested in winning, you realize, like, well, I can no longer go home and meet somebody who lost a son or a husband in these wars and tell them it was worthwhile. At the same time too, you see enough dead children, you see enough dead kids, you see enough grieving women in these countries, many of it from our actions, and you start to break, as I was doing.

So part of it is the constant cycling of people into Iraq and Afghanistan, or into Syria, into into these positions, so that they’re coming back out and then going back in, they’re not continuously getting burned out or overwhelmed by it. But it is a question, because–and I think now you start to get into issues of like, why did we get rid of the draft? We have not seen anything like what we saw in Vietnam, where by the early ’70s the U.S. Army, in particular, was completely broken. Where the U.S. Army was experiencing mutinies nearly every week, where units were refusing to fight. By the Army’s own estimate, a quarter of its officers who were killed in Vietnam were killed by their own soldiers. And that’s a conservative estimate. I mean, so we have seen nothing like that in these wars. And that’s, that’s, part of it is why they created this volunteer army, or in many ways like a mercenary army.

MARC STEINER:So–I’m sorry, go ahead. Americans are deeply disconnected from this war. It is very different in Vietnam, or even–especially World War II. People are disconnected because people don’t have a, aren’t in this fight personally at any level, for the most part, in this country.

So the question becomes if we are now in this war that is being escalated by the Trump administration, where more people are being killed then were in the previous years, and in the last years, here, of Obama–not saying it was great under Obama, but nonetheless was of Obama. And I just spoke just the other day with people who had just come back from Helmand province who were saying that, you know, the Taliban is in complete control of the rural areas. You cannot go out at night. Even in the cities you can’t go out at night. So if that’s the case, I mean, what is the endgame here? I mean, how do you get out of this war? How do you stop it? And if the Taliban is really that strong, and you know, for years you’ve seen people some people in the Karzai government and others were trying to negotiate with what they call the good Taliban, to try make some peace, headway. And the Americans didn’t like–kind of opposed them doing that, as well. So in any sense, what is the endgame here? I mean, what–how do you see it?

MATTHEW HOH:The Trump administration has brought about a new era in U.S. foreign policy and U.S. militarism. The Trump administration is different than the Bush and Obama administrations. While both Bush and Obama with the wars in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, were completely wrong-headed, criminal, they honestly thought they could find a way out. They honestly thought that they could bring about some type of political change. They believed that with elections, by building schools and healthcare centers, that we could bring about a change in political structure in these countries that favored the United States.

You have to understand, this is something that goes back decades now. I won’t get into prior to World War II, but certainly we had our imperial ambitions, right, for in this country before World War II. Simply ask the Native Americans, ask Hawaiians, ask Filipinos, et cetera. But after World War II what you see is the United States gets put in this position that is summarized best by George Kennan, who was the American diplomat who came up with the containment strategy of the Soviet Union. So a famed American diplomat. In 1948 he says, you know, he says, the United States now has 50 percent, more than 50 percent of the world’s wealth. We’re only 6 percent the world’s population. That’s a disparity that’s going to prove really hard to keep. But it’s our purpose to keep that disparity, and we have to do whatever it takes.

And from that point, I mean, you can trace when he says that to seeing what we did in Italy and Greece, right into Korea, into Vietnam. The dictatorships we supported in Indonesia, the Philippines, what we did in South America, and especially what we’ve done in the Middle East. Now, the idea of the Bush and Obama administration was that somehow we would do these military actions that would bring about political change in these countries that would make Iraq be the same color on the map that the United States is, right. It’s like this is one big game of Risk, basically. Or Afghanistan was going to be the same color as the United States.

Under the Trump administration, because I really believe of the significant influence that the generals like General Mattis and General Kelly, who are the secretary of defense and White House chief of staff, as well as other officials and other theorists who have gone into this Trump administration, you have a Trump administration that doesn’t see any purpose in trying to have such political change in these countries to create a new political order. What they believe is that you can just subjugate, and that’s the best way to go about it. You’ve tried elections, you’ve tried building healthcare centers, you tried building schools, you’ve tried to win hearts and minds. It didn’t work. So what we do is basically we subjugate those parts of those countries, and in this way keep our proxies in power.

So we’ve seen that. We’ve seen that already, say, like in Iraq, where rather than trying to do any type of political change with the Sunnis, we basically backed Shia armies and Kurdish armies with massive airpower, flattened every Sunni city in Iraq. I mean, the cities along the Euphrates and Tigris river valleys are completely flattened. Tens and tens of thousands killed; tens and tens of thousands are still missing. Millions displaced. And that’s the way they’re going to do it from now on. So basically–yeah.

MARC STEINER:I’m curious about–so what you’re describing here, though, as we conclude, just describing here is a strategy in the Trump administration that in some ways, even though the other strategies have been wrong-headed, flawed, and this war is insanely wrong. But this is–we’re escalating in a dangerous new way, here, in which rather than finding a way to pull out and end it, we’re actually escalating this in a way that is detrimental to Afghanistan and to us.

MATTHEW HOH:Yes, exactly. And this is what you expect from a cycle of violence, right. Cycles of violence continue to escalate. We engage in these wars in the Middle East, we occupy these countries. We tried by using religious sects against one another, by using ethnicities against one another. You’re seeing that right now in Afghanistan, the ethnic splits really occurring, with the Taliban attacking the Hazara minority. And this is this goes back–again, this goes back 40-some odd years. That goes back to Zbigniew Brzezinski’s ideas in the Carter administration to use ethnic and religious differences in the Soviet Union, particularly in Central Asia, to light the Soviet Union afire; to cause them problems, right.

So this is why it’s important that we don’t talk about Afghanistan in the sense that it began on 9/11, because this goes back decades. And what we’re seeing right now is the culmination of this type of imperial militarist policies that have by necessity morphed into–look, if you’re looking to see how Secretary Mattis talks about himself, he speaks of himself as if he’s like a legionnaire. He speaks about defending the republic. He describes the United States as being the apex of civilization. Basically, the idea that they are defending the United States and other parts of the empire, Europe and such, against the barbarians, and that we’re always going to be fighting in these borderlands, basically. And you’re going to look and you see John Kelly, the chief of staff of the White House, he said the same types of things.

And so that’s what you’re seeing with this Trump administration, basically. Subjugate those who won’t fall in line. Keep in power our proxies. Use other proxies. So that’s why you’re, that’s why this year you’ve only seen 12 Americans killed in Afghanistan. We’ve killed more Afghans than any other year since 2009. But we’ve only lost 12 Americans. That keeps it out of the papers, right. That keeps it off of CNN. You know, so let the Afghans kill the Afghans. Use the ethnic differences to really help subjugate one another. Use the Shia and Kurds to keep the Sunnis in line in Iraq. Use the Sunni Saudis and UAE forces to keep control in Yemen. So on and so on.

And so where this goes to–my God. I mean, it leads towards genocide. It leads to displacement, and it leads to further horrors and suffering that, you know, many people have been saying all along will be the consequences of this.

MARC STEINER:So very quickly here, as we conclude now. But I want to go back to where we began and just ask you, when the Americans and allied forces said they did not know there were civilians in this Taliban village, the Taliban-controlled village that they bombed in retaliation for the killing of the Americans, how real is that? I mean, how do you not know that where the Taliban are, civilians–you know, it’s the same stuff in Vietnam.

MATTHEW HOH:Yeah. As a guy–as a guy who did this, as a guy who was part of that stuff, as a guy who had Top Secret clearances, who took part in ground combat, who was involved–I’ve been involved in all kinds of levels. I was in the Secretary of the Navy’s office. Am I allowed to say–it was complete fucking bullshit. Can I say that on The Real News? I mean, like-

MARC STEINER:That describes it succinctly.

MATTHEW HOH:That’s bullshit. How can you not know–that, that’s like bombing a house in the United States and saying you didn’t know that there’d be a family in there. I mean, it’s complete bullshit. It’s complete nonsense. It’s–and what you do–this is what’s interesting. Last year, when the journalist Anand Gopal, and I’m blanking on who his counterpart was, they went into Iraq and they found that the United States was, by a factor of like 37 or 38, miscounting the numbers of civilians that were killed. Basically underreporting civilian deaths in the thousands. And then you look and you see what these Air Force general or Army generals say about it. And what it is, though, is that they basically are able to lie to themselves. And what it comes down to is if all the sources–if your sources in the military, if your intelligence people say they weren’t killed, if your pilots didn’t see them killed, if what the regulations say–if that’s, if that’s what–that’s what’s going. If that’s what it is, then they weren’t killed. That’s how they’re still able to lie to themselves so callously, so cruelly. How they were able to murder these people. And our generals shrug and say, well, now, that’s not the case. Because we didn’t–you know, our people said it didn’t happen. So it’s not the case.

You develop a mentality–it’s a sickness, really. But to be able to have that kind of dissonance with reality … yeah. And these generals who are in charge now, they were junior officers when this war began. So they’ve been brought up on-.

MARC STEINER:On this war.

MATTHEW HOH:Just decades now of lying. And getting away with it. And being promoted because they lie, or lied.

MARC STEINER:That’s an interesting perspective. I never thought about that before.

Matthew Hoh, this has been a pleasure to talk with you. I look forward to doing many more conversations. Thank you for the work, and thank you for standing up.

MATTHEW HOH:Thank you, Marc. Appreciate it.

MARC STEINER:We were talking to Matthew Hoh, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, and a Marine Corps veteran of the wars that we seem to be stuck in. And I’m Marc Steiner here for The Real News Network. Thank you so much for joining us. Take care.

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You won’t see much of this on US media, but the Afghan Taliban and the Afghan government have declared a ceasefire for the Eid Holiday, something the Afghan government has just extended and something the US military has not committed to.

These photos are of Afghan soldiers and police alongside Afghan Taliban fighters celebrating the ceasefire with one another. No clearer proof is needed to understand the absurdity and criminality of this war, and the other wars of this world, and the perennial suffering of the common man and woman, forced to take sides, often simply because of some form of sectarian identity or allegiance which is usually obligated only by the circumstances of birth. Meanwhile it is the powerful, the wealthy and the corporatized, almost always corrupted and wicked, in spite of moral and patriotic protestations otherwise, who trumpet and proclaim the need for war and who continue these wars despite the desire of the masses of people for peace.

Don’t believe the media, the politicians and the generals. Peace is possible. It always has been.

Chris Smiley at The Peace Report has put together an excellent short video where I describe what we did in Iraq to what I saw being done by the Israeli army and police forces to Palestinians. This is the latest documentary that Chris has assembled utilizing footage from our delegation to Palestine last year:

Also here is a longer, 40 minutes, documentary that Chris put together and released a couple of months ago that I don’t believe I have previously shared:

I received a good number of emails, as well as a couple of comments asking for references on last week’s post. I’ll summarize my response here, as well as post an email I sent to the author of an essay in Task and Purpose, a military focused blog, on the relationship of PTSD and combat veterans. That letter, which was more than 600 words and documented, was not even acknowledged, let alone responded to or published…so it goes 😉

As I noted in last week’s post I am dealing with traumatic brain injury (TBI). I also have a diagnosed neuro-cognitive disorder. For the purposes of this blog and the work I try to take part in, this is causing tremendous problems. I suffer from constant headaches, migraines and fatigues, as well as difficulty with concentration, thought and cognitive tasks. Since I published that post last Tuesday, today is the first day, the Tuesday before last, it’s now taken me more than ten days to have had the mental clarity, ability and energy to work on my computer, write and finish this post. I’ve had at least six migraines, lasting from four to sixteen hours, and the constant headaches and fog in my head have kept me just not off my computer, but away from reading books, essays and articles, as well as watching movies, documentaries and tv shows, walking my dogs and spending time with my partner. It should be noted that these cognitive and migraine problems can also be related to PTSD, depression, and alcohol abuse, but my doctors, both in NC and now here in DC, believe it to be rooted in brain injury. Most likely I believe this brain injury comes from the hundreds of explosive blasts I was exposed to during my time in the Marines, both in training and in Iraq, and as a government official in Iraq – live by the sword, die by sword. This type of brain injury may be similar to what football players and boxers experience later in life. I say all of this to explain why I have not responded sooner to requests for more information, as well as why I am not generally traveling, writing, commenting, appearing on media, etc these days.

However, back to the post from last week: When I speak of guilt, I am speaking of the guilt that comes from being ashamed of one’s actions, whether one engaged directly or indirectly in those actions, or whether one was trying to act morally as individual in otherwise immoral circumstances; eg. an individual takes part in the Iraq War, acts in a manner that an outsider would regard as moral, but because he/she has taken part in an event with ill aims and purposes he/she assumes a greater responsibility and role and feels as if he/she has transgressed his/her own morality. This form of guilt is known as moral injury and is becoming well understood to be one of the three signature invisible wounds of war alongside PTSD and TBI.

While different than PTSD and TBI, moral injury often co-exists and overlaps with either one or both. Often moral injury/guilt, PTSD and TBI reinforce and exacerbate one another and where one wound ends another may begin. However, it is important to remember that although the three wounds manifest symptoms in the same manner and are often closely linked, moral injury/guilt, PTSD and TBI are different from one another in their causes and treatment. Simply put PTSD is the body and mind’s reaction to a traumatic or series of traumatic events, TBI is actual damage done to the brain as the result of an external force, whether it be a physical blow or explosion, and moral injury/guilt is a psychological wound caused by the betrayal of an individual’s own values, ethics, morality etc. For further definitions please see here for PTSD, here for TBI and here moral injury/guilt.

With regards to guilt and moral injury, many people recognize that it can take the form of guilt that is widely known as survivor’s guilt. This is the guilt one feels from being left alive or unhurt when others were killed or injured. In veterans survivor’s guilt can be very pronounced as those that are killed or wounded are often friends or subordinates for whom the service member feels a parental like responsibility. I dealt with this in a very awful manner from a helicopter accident that I survived in 2006, but from which four others did not, including a man I consider a friend. In this case, my guilt was not because I solely survived and they died, but because I did not save them. This aspect, of not doing more to help or save others, is also seen often in veterans, as young men and women are recruited into the military and then conditioned to see themselves as heroes in the waiting.

There is another aspect of guilt and moral injury that comes with combat veterans and this is the guilt that comes from taking part in killing. Studies tell us the guilt that comes from this killing can come from either directly or indirectly taking part in the killing, e.g. you don’t have to have been the one who pulled the trigger, and that this guilt can come from not just the killing of civilians and innocents, but also from killing the “enemy”. This guilt over killing the enemy is particularly understandable if the veteran recognizes the enemy as human and as someone who is simply fighting occupation, ie. acting justly, such as the Afghans, Iraqis and Vietnamese fighting against occupation. In this enemy they recognize actions they would do themselves if the situation was reversed. For example, I used to say of the 153 Marines and Sailors I commanded in Iraq in 2006, that if they were young sunni males living in Anbar Province, 51 would be fighting us, 51 would be in Abu Ghraib and 51 would be dead. It is not a very long or difficult path for many veterans to reach this empathy for the enemy, particularly once they leave the bubble and cocoon of group-think that dominates military life and they are able to freely and independently examine both the micro and macro aspects of the war in which they took part.

In the video I shared last week, when I spoke of veterans killing themselves from guilt, I was referring to this guilt or moral injury: that of taking part in something criminal, unjust, and wrong and/or of having done something that violated spiritual, religious, professional or self-held values, principles, beliefs, etc. See the video I posted above for description of how the US Armed Forces mentally condition young men and women to see themselves as heroes and then what happens when they realize they are more a pawn or villain than a hero. For many this is the crux of moral injury and it is a soul crushing and existential crisis that I believe leads to a great many suicides.

In my case, my personal foundation, my very essence and being was ripped from me; to say my world was turned upside down is not just a minimalist description, but a trite one, as the experience, lasting years and managed now because of the great help of psychologists at the VA Medical Center in Durham, reached such depths as are only encountered in the most intense spiritual or awakened moments. Coupled with traumatic brain injury, depression, PTSD and alcohol abuse, it is easy to understand how with no ability to make amends and the constant hero worship of the American public this guilt could only be assuaged with thoughts of suicide. As my life crumbled and I believed in nothing, I was already an atheist, believing neither in the gods of Abraham or deism, despair and despondency became exaggerated and resounded in my head and soul with every little failure and misstep. Alcohol self medicated me for awhile, but the only escape from the sheer distress at the very base of my being was to end it.

Guilt driving someone to suicide should not be a striking idea, it is common in the literature and religion that we are first introduced to as children and teenagers: think of Judas in the Gospels or Lady Macbeth shouting: “Out, out damn spot!”. Guilt, however, has not been something men and women returning home from war have traditionally been screened for or asked about, more than likely I believe as any guilt associated and announced with the wars of the United States is politically and patriotically unacceptable (in that spirit RootsAction and myself received several angry and righteous emails denouncing the linking of suicide in veterans to feeling guilty about what they took part in during the war or killing the enemy).

As mentioned above, I will paste a letter I sent to the military blog Task and Purpose, but first I would like to list a number of references I use to support my conclusions that it is guilt that is the chief driver of suicides in combat veterans. Additionally, I have a pdf that contains links and abstracts to 25 separate studies that exam the relationship of guilt/moral injury, TBI, and PTSD to suicide in veterans. Please send me an email at matthew_hoh@riseup.net if you would like a pdf copy of that.

For information on suicide rates of veterans with PTSD compared to other mental health populations, please see Figure 3, page 9 in the report.

For information on suicide rates for veterans, broken out by age group and sex and compared to the US population, see Table 4, page 18

For information on suicide rate of Iraq and Afghan war veterans see Table 5, page 19 and Figure 22, page 33. By comparing these tables and utilizing the information available from the CDC in figure 2 of its suicide data on the general US population, you’ll see for example that the youngest male veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars have suicide rates nearly 6 times that of other young men their age. By looking at other tables and figures in the suicide report and comparing them to the rate of civilian suicides you’ll note that veterans in the age groups where the United States was in major and lengthy wars (WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan) have significantly higher rates of suicide than non-veterans. During periods of time when the United States was not in these large wars veteran suicide rates are on par or below civilian suicide rates.

Of course, being in war doesn’t mean that a service member sees combat or takes part in the killing experience that may lead him/her to later take their own life. However, there have been a number of studies that have shown that veterans who have been in combat have a higher rate of suicide than veterans who have also deployed to war but not seen combat (and incidentally, despite common perception, Iraq and Afghan veterans have been more likely to be in combat than veterans of any previous war, see my letter below to Task and Purpose).

The linking of combat and suicide has also been reported through journalism, such as this NY Times story which tracked a battalion of infantry Marines after their return home and to civilian life after their time in Afghanistan. At the time of the reporting, this unit of approximately 1,000 men who had been engaged in heavy fighting in Helmand Province, had a suicide rate 14 times higher than their civilian male counter-parts. As I know Marines who were in this unit, nothing makes me suspect that the rate of suicide has lessened for these men. Another news story detailed how WWII veterans kill themselves at 4 times the rate of non-veterans of the same age, which demolishes the myth that such a problem with mental health and suicidality didn’t exist for previous generations of war veterans or goes away with time and age. From the Washington Post linked in the previous sentence:

The reality was that of the 16 million Americans who served in the armed forces during World War II, fewer than half saw combat. Of those who did, more than 1 million were discharged for combat-related neuroses, according to military statistics. In the summer of 1945, Newsweek reported that “10,000 returning veterans per month . . . develop some kind of psychoneurotic disorder. Last year there were more than 300,000 of them — and with fewer than 3,000 American psychiatrists and only 30 VA neuropsychiatric hospitals to attend to their painful needs.”

One of those hospitals was the subject of John Huston’s 1946 documentary, “Let There Be Light,” which said that “20% of all battle casualties in the American Army during World War II were of a neuropsychiatric nature.” The film followed the treatment, mostly with talk therapy, drugs and hypnosis, of “men who tremble, men who cannot sleep, men with pains that are no less real because they are of a mental origin.” Huston’s movie was confiscated by the Army just minutes before its premiere in 1946 and was not allowed to be shown in public until 1981. The government rationale at the time was protecting the privacy of the soldiers depicted, though Huston maintained all had signed waivers..

and

“Most of the World War II men that I worked with came to me in their 70s or 80s, after retirement or the death of a spouse,” said Joan Cook, a professor of psychiatry at Yale and a PTSD researcher for Veterans Affairs. “Their symptoms seemed to be increasing, and those events seemed to act as a floodgate.”

For so many veterans, that was when they finally learned they were not crazy or weak. “Pretty much to a person, for them, learning about PTSD and understanding that people were researching it in World War II veterans was a real relief,” Schnurr said. “Many people felt isolated and crazy, and they thought it was just them. And they didn’t talk about it.”

“Across all suicide-related outcomes (i.e., suicide ideation, suicide attempt, and death by suicide), the relation of specific combat exposure with suicide-related out- comes was twice as large (r = .12) as the relation of general deployment across all suicide-related outcomes” and

“the difference between the relation of combat-specific experience and general deployment history with suicide- related outcomes was significant”.

The report goes on to say that being involved in combat increases the likelihood of suicide in veterans by 43%.

In the video from RootsAction I mention that as early as 1991 researchers had determined combat related guilt to be the most significant predictor of suicide in Vietnam veterans. That study can be found here. Its conclusion reads: “In this study, PTSD among Vietnam combat veterans emerged as a psychiatric disorder with considerable risk for suicide, and intensive combat-related guilt was found to be the most significant explanatory factor. These findings point to the need for greater clinical attention to the role of guilt in the evaluation and treatment of suicidal veterans with PTSD.”

Take note that the current checklist for screening veterans at the VA does not include specific questions about or references to guilt and a 2012 VA study noted:“Killing experiences are NOT routinely examined when assessing suicide risk. Our findings have important implications for conducting suicide risk assessments in veterans of war.” (emphasis mine)

As mentioned above I have links, citations and abstracts for 25 studies I have reviewed that are available online, primarily through NIH, that explore the connection of suicide, combat, guilt, PTSD and TBI. As it it 12 pages long I will not paste it here, but if you would like a PDF, please let me know by comment or by email (matthew_hoh@riseup.net).

As I noted in my original post last week, there is also a very real connection between TBI and suicides, and with so many Iraq and Afghan veterans living now with TBI many of the suicides that are occurring would likely be connected to TBI. More information on TBI and veterans is found in the letter below.

Please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions.

Peace to you.

Matt

Below is a letter I sent to the military blog Task and Purpose, which went unacknowledged, regarding many of the common misperceptions of PTSD and veterans.

Thank you for your recent article on PTSD and the effects of transition on veterans. I believe the broad outlines of the study and its conclusions are correct. It reminds me of what I heard said about American soldiers returning from WWI: “how are you going to keep them on the farm when they have seen Paris?” There are a few things that the study’s authors, however, did not take into account and that can lead to misunderstanding about veterans by the public, particular the effects of combat.

First, the study’s authors do not differentiate between the veteran population as a whole, those who deployed, and those who saw combat. This is crucial for understanding the stresses and challenges veterans face and why they face them. For example, a meta-study from the National Center for PTSD by Brett Litz and William Schlenger, examined 14 published PTSD studies of Afghan and Iraq war veterans, and found that troops who had seen combat had PTSD rates of 10-18% but for troops that had not seen combat the rate was only 1.5%. An important differentiation.

The authors also do not make the correlation or connection to the symptoms that they identify in veterans due to transition stress to the same symptoms that occur in unemployed civilians. There is a vast body of literature on unemployment related symptoms that has come out of the Great Recession, particularly in men. These symptoms include depression, anger, listlessness/apathy, mood impairment, sexual dysfunction, relationship problems and other issues that are similar to the symptoms that veterans experience upon separating from the military.

Secondly, the authors do not discuss the role of TBI in OIF/OEF veterans. Rates of TBI among all OIF/OEF era veterans range from 10-20% according to the VA. The Rand Corporation and the Congressional

Research Service put the rate as high as 23%. So, more OIF/OEF veterans suffer from TBI than PTSD, and as you most likely know, TBI can have a latent development and is often under reported (as is PTSD).

“The soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are having a very unique experience both because they have very good body armor now and because of the way in which insurgents use a lot of explosives. The soldiers are exposed to a lot of explosions, so they get hit over and over again, but they’re protected from all but the worst cases of secondary and tertiary effects. Whereas had it been the Vietnam War, for example, they [the soldiers] would have been much more grievously injured and would have been evacuated.”

And the study’s co-author said this:

“Probably the only war that is comparable to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is World War I, the trench and artillery warfare. The term “shell shock” came from that war and that really refers to the effects of these post-concussive symptoms.

In the group of veteran participants in this study, the average number of blast exposures that were severe enough to cause acute symptoms consistent with the diagnosis of mild traumatic brain injury was 20. It was more common to have been exposed to between 50 to 100 blasts than to have a single one.”

That leads to my third point, which I think would make an excellent article for you. The notion as advanced terribly by Sebastian Junger that these wars have been safer is demonstrably false and there is no evidence to demonstrate such, rather OIF/OEF (not just combat arms but all veterans) have had higher exposure rates to combat, violence, death and injury than any previous generation of veterans. Looking at a broad range of studies and surveys we see that OIF and OEF veterans experience combat at rates of 50% or higher, again a higher rate than any previous generation of American veterans.

I have pasted below summaries I have written from various studies on OIF/OEF combat exposure, please note that some of the studies, such as the last study I reference, include veterans who did not deploy, so the rate of combat exposure is much higher than stated for deployed veterans:

Studies and surveys have shown that veterans from OIF and OEF have experienced greater or equal rates of combat/trauma exposure of veterans of other wars. For example, the 2010 National Veterans Survey reported that the overall veteran population has experienced combat at a rate of 34%. However, among veterans who deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq 63% of veterans had combat exposure. For veterans who went to war zones prior to WWII the rate was 55.4%, for those who went to war zones during WWII it was 44.9%, in Korea it was 26%, in Vietnam it was 44% and in the Gulf War it was 41%. That information comes from a study done by Ryan Edwards of Queens College, City University of New York in 2014.

Additional sources debunking Junger’s and others unsupported and undocumented notion that only 10% of American troops saw combat or experienced danger/trauma in Afghanistan and Iraq, include:

–a 2004 study by Walter Reed Army Institute of Research that found 77-87% of American troops discharged their weapons in Iraq and more than 90% reported coming under small arms fire

–a 2009 study from the Rand Corporation, by the same authors from aRand study that Junger cites in his book, reports that only 10-15% of Afghan and Iraq veterans report no combat trauma experienced at all during deployment and close to 75% report multiple exposures to combat trauma

–a 2011 study from the National Center for Veterans’ Studies at the University of Utah reported 58-60% of Afghan and Iraq veterans had experienced combat

–a 2014 study published by the British Journal of Psychiatry found that contrary to Junger’s claims on p87 of his book that British troops had half the rate of PTSD than the American troops that “were in combat with them”, both British and American troops that experienced comparable levels of combat exposure had comparable rates of PTSD. The authors of the 2004 Walter Reed report referenced above also shared this finding. In the 2014 study of the American veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq nearly 70% reported receiving small arms fire; 85% experienced artillery, rocket or mortar fire; 43% handled human remains; 62% experienced dead/injured US forces; 24% had a friend injured near them; 28% gave aid to the wounded; 42% experienced sniper fire; 50% cleared and searched buildings; 51% experienced hostile civilians; and 45% reported a threatening situation to which they could not respond

–a 2014 survey of studies by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry found that among veterans and service-members the greatest predictors of PTSD were high combat exposure rates and sexual abuse as an adult, and not events that occurred prior to service in the military as is often alleged. This is confirmed by many other studies, including a study by the VA from 1991 that found the best predictor of suicide in Vietnam veterans was combat related guilt.

–a 2016 study by Texas Tech University of student service–members and veterans found that 44% of those surveyed had experienced combat. This study included veterans and active duty/reserve service members, both those that deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq and those that did not.

Suicide is another factor the authors do not address. According to the VA, among the youngest male veterans of OIF/OEF, ages 18-29, the suicide rate is almost 6x higher for them than for their civilian male peers. For veterans in their 30s it is 3-4x higher. Among combat units that have been tracked the suicide rate is as high as 14x that of their civilian peers. This high and exaggerated rate of suicide holds true for all generations of American veterans who served during a war era. WWII veterans have a rate 4x higher than their non veteran peers. The link between combat and suicide is undeniable and has been well documented (a meta-study by the National Center for Veterans Studies in 2015 found a significant and clear link between combat and suicide in 21 of 22 studies examined). For veterans who did not serve in a war era, the rate of suicide is comparable or less than the civilian peer population. Veteran suicide is very troubling and not something to be disregarded when talking about veterans issues, particularly mental health.

One final note, and thank you for indulging this long correspondence, but the source in the study you write about, that cites less than a 10% PTSD rate in veterans comes from a survey of 700 Danish soldiers. The Danes faced very hard fighting in Helmand, at one point I believe they had the most casualties per capita of the nations in ISAF (they had one deployed battalion on infantry), but I think it is disingenuous and unwise of the study’s authors to use a study of Danish troops, to make a broad statement about American veterans.

For your reference, I was a Marine combat engineer officer for ten years. I have PTSD, TBI and neuro-cognitive disorder diagnosis from my time at war.

Let me know if you’d like more information. Again, thank you for indulging this long email (I thought this a better format than leaving a comment), and please consider writing an article on the documented level of combat in OIF and OEF veterans to dispel the myth that only 10% see combat, that these wars were safe, OIF/OEF vets had it easy, etc.

It’s been almost five months since I’ve written anything, and this post is not going to contain much of my writing, but rather sharing with you a note RootsAction sent out to its vast membership containing a clip of me in a talk I gave in London at the end of February:

It should be noted that traumatic brain injury, which in some studies has been found to be present in more than 20% of Afghan and Iraq veterans, and from which I suffer from, also has a very real and significant link to suicide in veterans.

The full video of the talk in London is found below. That talk, titled: “War, Journalism and Whistleblowers — 15 years after Katharine Gun’s Truth Telling on the Verge of the Iraq War”, included Katharine Gun, Thomas Drake, Jesselyn Radack, Silkie Carlo, Norman Solomon and Duncan Campbell, all of whom are really incredible and brave people that I look up to and admire.

I would like to share other parts of that talk later, as we as a panel were questioned by two Iraqi women during the Q&A. Their questions, testimony and witness led to a very emotional and powerful session for many of us.

A couple of days later Tom, Jess and I participated in a panel in Graz, Austria, at the 2018 Elevate Festival. We were joined by Diana Bartelo, Cian Westmoreland and Lisa Ling, as well as by video by Dan Ellsberg.

Below is the note that RootsAction sent out. I hope to begin writing again in the near future. I appreciate all of you following this blog and my work. Peace.

——————————

In this video clip from a recent RootsAction Education Fund event, U.S. veteran and whistleblower Matthew Hoh shatters the popular myth that post-traumatic stress disorder is behind the high suicide rates for U.S. veterans. He notes that PTSD has the lowest connection to suicide of any mental health problem, according to the U.S. Veterans Administration (VA).

Well, then what’s causing so many people so frequently thanked for their “service” to kill themselves?

The answer turns out not to be a secret, but something that most people and most organizations would rather not mention.

Since 1990, Hoh tells us, the VA has known that guilt over participation in killing human beings is the best predictor of suicide. Veterans are killing themselves because they feel guilty for what they’ve done.

Ssshhh! You shouldn’t say that! It’s anti-veterans!

Really? Does it help current veterans or impede the production of more veterans to hush up the problems they face? Haven’t we learned that the first step in addressing a problem is identifying it?

Hoh is himself a veteran who has struggled with a wide array of issues, including guilt, PTSD, brain injury, and substance abuse. He has been certified by North Carolina as a Peer Support Specialist for Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder. He knows of what he speaks. His interest is in helping other veterans. In the video he cites the studies that back up his statements.

Matthew Hoh had nearly 12 years of experience with America’s wars overseas with the United States Marine Corps, Department of Defense and State Department. In 2009, Hoh resigned in protest from his post in Afghanistan with the State Department over the American escalation of the war and, in 2010, he was named the Ridenhour Prize Recipient for Truth Telling.

Hoh has been a Senior Fellow with the Center for International Policy since 2010. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Public Accuracy, an Advisory Board Member for ExposeFacts, North Carolina Committee to Investigate Torture, Veterans For Peace, and World BEYOND War, and he is an Associate Member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

The event from which this video is taken marked 15 years since the March 2, 2003, story provided by whistleblower Katharine Gun revealed that the United States and Great Britain were working together to spy on other nations’ delegations to the United Nations as part of an effort to coerce them into voting for a war on Iraq.

We cannot create such events or provide support for such whistleblowers if you don’t help. Please donate!

Mohsen Abdelmoumen: You are a member of the Center for International Policy. Can you tell us about the missions of this organization and what is its impact on American politics?

Matthew Hoh: The Center for International Policy (CIP) is a think tank located in Washington, DC that was established in the late 1970s chiefly to oppose US military policies in Central America. We still maintain that original purpose, of opposing US militarism, but we also work on issues involving South America, the Middle East, Central Asia and East Asia. We also focus quite a bit on US military spending and the militarism that encompasses all aspects of American policy, culture and society. We are proud to say that our mission is to “advance a sustainable, just and peaceful world.”

One of the things that set CIP apart from most of the other think tanks in Washington, DC and the rest of the United States is that we truly are non-partisan, in that we are not affiliated with any political party. Additionally, most of the money we raise and we operate on comes not from corporations, but rather from individuals and foundations who believe in our mission of resisting American militarism and supporting human rights.

We work with members of Congress on a consistent basis, as well as appear in the media in order to have an effect on American policy. Many of our members also conduct research on issues of militarism, human rights and social justice in order to help educate and inform the public and lawmakers.

You were also senior official at the State Department as Director of the Study Group on Afghanistan and you provided reports that went directly to the Secretary of State of the United States. As an expert, how do you see the evolution of the political process in Afghanistan?

The Afghanistan Study Group was part of CIP and not a part of the State Department. I was, however, a State Department official stationed in Afghanistan in 2009.

Unfortunately, I have not seen any positive evolution or change in the political system or process in Afghanistan since 2009. What we have seen are three national elections that have been ruled to be grossly illegitimate and fraudulent by outside observers, but have been validated and supported by the American government through the presence of tens of thousands of soldiers and the spending of tens of billions of dollars.
We have seen the creation of extra-constitutional positions in the government, such as the Chief Executive Officer position occupied by Abdullah Abdullah, which was done at the behest of the American government. Additionally, bargains and compromises that were brokered by the American government in an attempt to create more a more inclusive government, reduce corruption and heal fractures among the political bloc that once supported Hamid Karzai and the American presence has failed to achieve those things.Corruption is still the dominant feature of the Afghan government, and the political support for the rule of Kabul has deteriorated and splintered by the corruption and the machinations of the Karzai and now Ghani governments.
Most importantly, the political process, by being so corrupt, by seating successive governments that won by fraud and by disenfranchising various political communities, has alienated many, many Afghans, and not just those Pashtuns who ally themselves with the Taliban, from the government in Kabul. This has allowed for greater support for militia commanders and warlords outside of Kabul, as well as the Taliban, and has allowed the war to progress with no real hopes for reconciliation, negotiations or a cease fire any where in the near future. (By supporting and growing a kleptocracy, a system of have and have nots, that system has by its nature and necessity produced more people out of the system than people in the system every year. This causes resentment, grievances and a desire to share in the spoils and gifts of American occupation that leads to greater violence, more political chaos and a dearth of hope for the future).

You have been the highest official to resign from your duties at the State Department. Can you explain to us what was the disagreement that led you to resign?

I had been twice to Iraq prior to my time in Afghanistan, and I had been working on issues of the wars since 2002 when I was in the Pentagon as a Marine Corps officer. I could no longer go along with the killing of the war, and the lies that propped up that killing. I saw in the Afghan government the worst excesses that I had seen in the Iraqi government and I knew the Afghan government in Kabul had no real or true interest in coming to a peace with the Taliban and those in the Afghan insurgency.

I also saw that Barack Obama’s administration cared only for the political value of Afghanistan in terms of American politics and had no real interest in the well being of the Afghan people. I also knew the amount of money that American corporations were making off of the war and how that influenced American policy and the escalation of the war. Finally, I also knew that American generals and civilians tasked with overseeing the war were more interested in preserving American empire, as well as their own careers and legacies, than achieving peace or ending the suffering of the Afghan people.

In addition to being a diplomat, you were a soldier and served in Iraq as a commander in the Marine Corps. In your opinion, was the US intervention in Iraq in 2003 justified?

No, the war in Iraq was not justified. There were many reasons for the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, but none of them were morally valid, internationally legal or had to do with the safety and security of the American people, or the well being of the Iraqi people. The reasons were many and included of course President Bush’s desire to win a war to win reelection in the United States in 2004, people in the government and foreign policy community who believed in removing Saddam Hussein to “democratize and Americanize” the Middle East for reasons of American Empire and hegemony, the influence of Israeli policy and thought on American policy, Iraq’s large and vast oil reserves, and the influence of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Nations.

In your opinion, should the Bush administration be accountable in particular to a court for the crimes it committed in Iraq?

Yes. Without elaboration, war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed by the Bush Administrationand those in charge should be held responsible. It is as simple as that.

You are a privileged witness as a diplomat and as a superior officer of the war in Iraq. You describe what happened during the intervention in Iraq as a vast racket.Can you tell us why?

The amounts of money that were made on the Iraq war by American corporations and individuals were enormous. In terms of direct spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (the two are inseparable in many ways including in how the financing and the money making occurred), the direct costs of the wars are nearly $1.8 trillion dollars. Now these are just direct costs. Adding indirect costs of the war, such as healthcare for veterans and interest payments on debt, we see that the long term costs of the war may reach $6 trillion dollars. Again, this is just for the wars directly. At the same time the budget for the Pentagon this coming year will be $700 billion, which is 10 times more than Russia and 3 times more than China spend on their militaries, and this $700 billion does not include the money we spend on our intelligence agencies, healthcare for veterans, homeland security or interest payments for past defense and war debt (next year the United States will spend about $115 billion just on interest and debt payments for past wars and military spending).

This money primarily goes to American corporations that then put money into funding politicians in Congress, as well as to funding think tanks and universities that help to promote the policies that foster and sustain America’s wars in the Muslim world and America’s massive military budget. This funding process is cyclical and the instability and violence that American militarism, intervention and occupation fosters and sustains is utilized as continued justification by American politicians and generals for more military spending.

On a another level, what I witnessed by my presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, is that the mass amounts of money that are injected into these war zones fuel the corruption and that the massive amounts of money being received by those who are loyal or collaborating with the American forces provides no incentive for the Afghans or Iraqis working with the Americans to seek peace, reconciliation or a cease fire with their adversaries. So long as the Americans are keeping them in power and making them rich, there is no sense in pursuing an end to the conflict, an end to the American occupation/presence/influence or to seek reconciliation.

You are a member of the Board of Directors for Council for a Livable World and an Advisory Board Member for Expose Facts. Can you explain to our readership what the missions of these organizations are?

I’m sorry, but you must have seen an older biography for me, as I am no longer with the Council for a Livable World.

I am, however, an advisory board member for Veterans For Peace, Expose Facts, World Beyond War and the North Carolina Committee to Investigate Torture. I am also an associate member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. All of these organizations seek to encourage peace and an end to America’s wars overseas as well as an end to the wars that we have in the United States, especially the oppression of people of color in the US.

Veterans For Peace is an international organization dedicated to informing people about the true costs and realities of war.

Expose Facts is an organization comprised of many former government officials who encourage whistleblowing and members of government, the military and corporations who are witness to wrongdoing to come forward and report this wrongdoing to the public.

World Beyond War is an international organization devoted to restructure how our world is shaped and to get people to believe and understand that a peaceful world is possible.

North Carolina Committee to Investigate Torture is the only organization of its kind in the US. It is the only organization that is devoted wholly to researching, documenting and publicizing the role of the state of North Carolina in the American torture practices under President Bush. The desire is to hold people accountable for the torture that was conducted.

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) is an organization of former government and military members who were either intelligence officers or utilized intelligence in their careers (associate members). The purpose of VIPS is to provide alternative recommendations and views to the President of the United States, and to the media, that he is not getting from the American intelligence services.

While whistleblowers inform public opinion on various issues by taking major risks, don’t you think it is more than necessary to launch initiatives or even create a global specific program to protect whistleblowers?

Yes, one of the things I would like to see created is a fund to help whistleblowers pay for the very high costs that they incur by becoming whistleblowers. Whistleblowers lose their jobs, have expensive legal fees and may go for years without having the money necessary to support their families and pay their bills. This is a tactic used by the government and corporations to frighten people into not becoming whistleblowers. I would like to see a fund started that would help whistleblowers pay for these expenses and not be forced into bankruptcy and insolvency because they followed their consciences and reported wrongdoing.

You are also a man committed to the cause of the Palestinian people; you participated in a trip to Palestine with Veteran for Peace to see the conditions in which the Palestinians live. Can you tell us about this action?

This was a very important trip for me as spending 18 days with the people of Palestine and the popular resistance to the Israeli occupation was extremely moving and powerful. You can read essays and books or watch documentaries and films about the suffering of the Palestinian people, but until you are with them, you don’t really understand the horror and the tragedy of the Israeli occupation. As an American it was very important for me to go and stand in solidarity with my Palestinian brothers and sisters particularly as my country is often the sole supporter of Israel and gives the Israeli military nearly $11 million dollars a day in assistance.

The United States is an unconditional supporter of Israel. How do you explain that?

The main reason for this is because of the perverted and corrupted political system in the United States that allows money to influence politics so greatly. The United States would not be such an unconditional supporter of Israel if not for the influence of money provided to American politicians, primarily through the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) but also through other sources. Without this overwhelming purchasing of politicians I don’t believe Israel would receive the support it does from the United States and I don’t think that Israel would be able to continue its occupation of the Palestinian people and the crimes against them.

In your opinion, what is the contribution of veterans like you, especially through Veteran for Peace, to support the resistance to US imperialism around the world?

The most important things American veterans can do is to speak openly and plainly about what they saw during their time in the military, what they took part in the wars, and what they truly believe the purposes of the wars and the American military is. It is hard in America for people to speak against the military and the wars, because we have a culture that celebrates war, violence and the military, but veterans must find the courage to do so because through their witness and testimony people can understand the realities and the truths of America’s wars, empire and imperialism.

It is important too for American veterans to stand in solidarity with those resistance movements both outside the United States and internal to the United States that are fighting against American militarism, occupation and intervention. This includes standing against client governments of the United States like Israel, South Korea and Japan. It is also necessary for veterans to stand with the oppressed communities of the United States; with Native Americans, Latino Americans and Black Americans. All of the oppressed people within the United States are victims of America’s militarism and continue to be oppressed by a system that provides overwhelming economic, civic and societal benefits to the wealthy white classes while continuing to punish people of color through mass incarceration, police violence, deportation, economic disadvantage, inadequate health care, poorer education, etc. Such treatment of people of color would not have been possible in the past without the American military and the effects of militarism on the white people of the United States, and now with militarized police remains essential in continuing the oppression. Much of this oppression finds its praxis and its implementation through the culture of violence in the United States that is a direct consequence of the militarism that so many American embrace. I believe militarism to be one of the true religions of the United States. This militarism leads to this culture of violence which accepts violence based solutions as not the only option, but the necessary option. It is through such policies of violence based solutions that America has the largest prison population in the world, epidemics of police violence, mass deportations of non-white people, etc.

How do you evaluate the alternative media experience? Don’t you think that in order to counter imperialist manipulation and propaganda, we need to rely on highly engaged and highly effective alternative media to win the information battle that is strategic?

Yes, I could not agree with you more. When I first started speaking about the war I was allowed onto and into main stream media. I appeared on the main cable news networks and was published in major newspapers, but over the last decade voices of dissent, particularly those who are against war and imperialism have been dramatically marginalized from the main stream, or corporate owned press. In 2014, when I was arguing against a renewed American presence in Iraq, I was only able to appear on one cable news network and none of the major newspapers sought my opinion. The same occurred for many of my colleagues. Where we were successful in appearing on cable television news, CNN in my case, or being printed in major news papers and media outlets, we were outnumbered 5, 10 or 15 to one in terms of the voices and opinions that were pro-war. For example, when I appeared on CNN during that time, I was introduced as “the lone dove in a field of wolves” by the anchor (Brooke Baldwin). This situation, this echo chamber, of pro-war, pro-imperialism and pro-violence voices has only solidified and I know only a couple of people who have been able to get onto the major networks to argue against war and then they are outnumbered considerably and often drowned out by pro-war and pro-empire voices.

Without the alternative media voices like mine would have no outlet. I think however that the success of the alternative media has caused the mainstream media to tighten and limit its allowance of dissent as fear of dissent against the wars having an effect on the population and policy has caused the intersection of the military/government, the media and corporations to more rigidly control the messages being allowed. I think this really accelerated in 2013 when public opinion and public action towards Congress kept the Obama Administration from launching a war against the government of Syria. The nexus of the top echelons of the military/government, the media and the corporations is quite real and reinforcing, and the consequences of this have been the limitation and, in some cases, elimination of dissent from the corporate owned media.

What do you think of the fact that the Trump administration is going back on the Iranian nuclear deal and what is your opinion on the escalation between the United States and North Korea? Does US imperialism still need an enemy to exist, namely the USSR, Vietnam, Cuba, Iraq, China, Iran, Russia, North Korea, etc.?

I think that Trump going back on the nuclear deal with Iran was bound to happen. Trump is following the lead of the foreign policy establishment in the United States which is first and foremost committed to American hegemony and dominance. The preservation of the American Empire is the mission of most foreign policy experts in the United States, whether they are liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. Cooperation between nations, demilitarization and world wide respect for human rights is hardly ever a concern for the American foreign policy establishment. This is why we see the same bellicosity to North Korea, and let’s not forget both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have threatened to destroy North Korea themselves.

I think not just for imperialism, but for our culture of militarism, violence and our nationalist concept of American Exceptionalism we must have an enemy. We view ourselves as Good, so there must be a Bad or an Evil. American Exceptionalism and the violence that comes with it, believed to be redemptive and justice-based, is a Manichean, binary framework, so Americans must have an adversary or an enemy. So sad and so tragic that so many have suffered, died and been made homeless all around the world, over the decades for such an absurd, ignorant, simplistic and false belief.

You received the Ridenhour Prize for Truth Telling in 2010. What can you tell us about this award?

It was a very great honor. The prizes are awarded in the name of Ron Ridenhour, the soldier who helped alert people to the massacre at My Lai during the Vietnam War. It is and has been very humbling to be included in such a prestigious group of men and women who have followed their consciences, looked past the risk and did what was right.

Earlier this week the NY Times had this story on the expansion of CIA paramilitary teams in Afghanistan. This is my response, in interviews with KPFK and KPFA, and published in CounterPunch and AntiWar.com.

“These CIA teams in Afghanistan are not just reminiscent of the Operation Phoenix program in Vietnam, the death squads of Central America and the Shia torture and murder militias of Baghdad, they are the direct descendants of them. The CIA is continuing a long tradition of utilizing savage violence by indigenous government forces, in this case along sectarian/ethnic lines, in an attempt to demoralize and ultimately defeat local populations.

The results will assuredly be the same: war crimes, mass murder, torture and the terrorization of entire communities of men, women and children in their own homes. This will lead to more support for the Taliban and a deepening of the war in Afghanistan. The CIA should ask itself, where has this worked before?

This escalation by the CIA in Afghanistan fits into the broader war campaign of the United States in the Muslim world as the United States, despite its protestations of wanting negotiations and ultimately peace, turns areas not under the control of its proxy government into large swathes of free fire zones as it punishes and attempts to subjugate populations not under its control.

Iraq’s campaign in the Euphrates and Tigris River valleys, the Kurdish campaign in western Syria and the Saudi and UAE campaign against the Houtis in Yemen have been devastating and vicious assaults on populations, critical infrastructure and housing, that coupled with nighttime commando raids that terrorize entire villages and neighborhoods, look not to bring a political settlement, reconciliation or peace, but rather subjugate, along ethnic and sectarian lines, entire population groups to achieve American political desires in the Muslim world.

This CIA program of using Afghan militias to conduct commando raids, the vast majority of which will be used against civilians despite what the CIA states, falls in line with American plans to escalate the use of air and artillery strikes against the Afghan people in Taliban-held areas, almost all of whom are Pashtuns.

Again, the purpose of this campaign is not to achieve a political settlement or reconciliation, but to brutally subjugate and punish the people, mostly rural Pashtuns, who support the Taliban and will not give in to the corrupt American run government in Kabul.”

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Some Photos To Show How I Got Here (Nov. 2015)

I see this and I wait for King Kong to come out of the mists. But he’s a myth. Don’t let myths define you, don’t let outdated and irrelevant stories propel you, take your life and be your own reality.

With Kevin Lucy and Ray McGovern in NYC in May 2015. Ray was career CIA, having served as George W. Bush’s personal briefer. He is my mentor. Kevin’s son Jeff was a Marine who killed himself upon returning home from Iraq. Kevin courageously and unselfishly shares his and his family’s story to strangers in order to help people heal.

Meeting with my Iraqi engineer staff in September of 2004. I know at least three of them have been killed and one maimed since I left. If they are still in Salah ad Din, they live in the battleground of the Sunni Islamic State and the Shia government/militias.

Watching the oil on the ancient Tigris River drift by in January 2005.

With Code Pink and Ray McGovern speaking against the US and NATO intervention in Libya. Spring 2011.

Yep. This is real. From the Green Zone in 2004.

My half of my trailer in Baghdad. 2004/5.

Afghan men and boys gawk at a Western woman walking through the streets of their city. Qalat, Zabul Province, Southern Afghanistan.

Election day is approaching in Qalat, Zabul Province in August, 2009. The elections were masterfully corrupt and illegitimate. It was truly brilliant and beautiful election theft. Too bad so many young American boys bled out obscenely so far from home to make that happen.

Becoming a war tax resister.

Two brothers killed by American bombs in Syria in 2014. It’s quite rare to see such testimony of our wars abroad in American media, but overseas, on networks not headquartered in New York City, viewers have a full appreciation for what the US is doing.

Speaking in Dallas in August 2011. I had promised myself this was to be my last speaking event, that I was going to leave the wars behind and start a new life. Staying with friends that night in Dallas I was unable to drink as I needed and I lay awake wracked with anxiety, anger and sorrow. The alcohol I traveled with I had finished, alone, in their guest room, the night before. The next day, on the flight home, I took advantage of a first class upgrade in order to drink the three hours back to DC. Arriving back home I met my parents and girlfriend for dinner. Strengthened by the alcohol I was confident and happy in my new life. It didn’t happen. The only thing I was successful in was leaving my work. Within months my relationship was over, breakdowns were daily and suicide was the next step. A therapist in DC saved my life.

Dinner in Qalat with the Ambassador. Summer 2009.

One of my D9 armored bull dozers at work in Iraq in 2006 or 2007. We used these to berm in cities and destroy homes. Please see: https://matthewhoh.com/2016/03/16/remembering-rachel-corrie-letters-from-palestine/

A village from the air north of Baghdad in June, 2004. We flew low and fast, which to the villagers was a loud and near constant reminder of our presence.

With Amos Lee, Raleigh, NC.

Speaking at a local Peace Action Dinner in 2013. Sober for a year I approached speaking selectively and with hesitation. At this point I was working for $7.35 at the YMCA, but I was alive.

A young girl in Qalat, Zabul Province Afghanistan. At her age she has only a few years remaining of being outside, not covered, and not escorted by a male relative. When she reaches puberty she will be shut away with the remainder of the female members of her family until she is married off to start a family of her own. If she is lucky she will be a first wife.

Debating Nate Fick of Generation Kill fame on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric in December 2009.

My first effort with my friend Danny Davis. We were rejected by about 15 newspapers before Defense News ran it. August 2010.

A statue of Salah ad Din was prominent on our base in Tikrit. Born in Tikrit in the 12th century, Salah ad Din would lead the Muslim reconquest of Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187. As modern day crusaders most of us aboard the base were ignorant of such history and blind to the symbolism of the great general to the Iraqi, Arab and Muslim people.

Afghan villagers endure our speeches and await our paying a family for killing their sons.

My security team at an outdoor restaurant in Sulimania, Kurdistan. Sit outside, smoke cigs, talk to people and be nice. Heading to Kurdistan, with a stop first in Kirkuk, every six weeks was like R&R.

Checking on the status of road work in southeastern Afghanistan. Summer 2009.

Ashore in Thailand in 2001.That’s Thailand’s aircraft carrier behind me. I’d bet dollars to donuts she still hasn’t put out for operations yet. But, hey, Thai admirals get to say they have an aircraft carrier…

A simple plaque to remember the presence of United States Marines in Australia at the War Shrine in Melbourne, Australia.

Speaking in NJ. Winter 2011.

One of my meetings with local Afghans. Sometimes you would get someone representing the Taliban. Their message: we are tired of fighting, but we are not going to surrender. Surrender of course being the only thing I was authorized to communicate to them. Zabul Province, Afghanistan, September 2009.

The sandbags of the embassy compound in Baghdad. 2004/5

You know, things are often right outside your door that you don’t take the time to notice.

Boys and girls perform for Paul Bremer, CPA staff and Iraqi guests at the transitioning of the Ministry of Youth and Sport to Iraqi control. This was over eleven years ago. What happened to these children? What have they become if they have survived?

Due to my position, which really was seniority by default, because no one else showed up, I had my own bedroom with working bath. Here’s my toilet and bidet. I had a hot shower for half the year which was an unbelievable luxury compared to nearly everyone else in the country, soldier, insurgent or civilian (our hot water tank was located outside). Tikrit, Iraq, 2004/5

Sam Winstead, who fought at Peleliu and Okinawa in World War II, speaks at the Swords to Plowshares Memorial Bell Tower during Veterans Day observations in Raleigh, NC, 2014. Each year Sam rides his bike to Washington DC to speak for peace.

Day laborers I supervised one day on the grounds of the CPA compound. These men filled sandbags all day for 7 or 8 dollars a day (maybe a little more or less). I liked these men much more than I liked most of the CPA/Embassy staff. Interestingly, most of these men were Shia, however they spoke reverently of the Sunni uprising in Fallujah of April 04. Not many of us were talking to local people, or at least local people who were not on long term, well paying contracts.

Afghan war widows cleaning raisins. These were the only women allowed to work in the province. Summer 2009.

My first sergeant and I inspect a pipeline we ruptured in Barwahna, Iraq in November 2006. I still have that uniform with the oil stains.

Yes.

Just some guns my friends had in Baghdad…2004.

A view of Iraq from an open Humvee. This photo would have been from the Fall of 2004. A year and a half after the invasion we were still operating in vehicles open and exposed to enemy gunfire, rockets and IEDs, while welding our own armor onto the vehicles for protection.

That’s right.

These parakeets could be bought in the bazaar in the Green Zone, not more than a couple of blocks from the US Embassy. When suicide bombers hit the bazaar, one of them hit this store. I’ve always worried about what happened to these birds.

Che lives! On the border with Pakistan in southeastern Afghanistan a vendor sells Che Guervara stickers. I still have one. Summer 2009.

Reconstruction and governance team with PSD team leaders. Early 2005. Tikrit, Iraq.

Hugh Elsea’s wedding, Southwest Virginia near Lyhchburg, October 2012. This was the first event I ever attended as a sober person. Thankfully it was a dry wedding.

Yes, who would he torture?

One of my Huskies. You placed a Marine inside of this vehicle and he drove along the road with metal detectors under the vehicle. Its modular design allowed it to be blown to pieces without the Marine suffering visible wounds, usually. Of course, a minor design flaw was that the detector was behind the front wheels. My Marines drove these vehicles daily looking for bombs in and on the side of the roads. They never complained.

Building a better Iraq. Nothing like tempting people with the possibility of clean water for their children but then delivering a civil war onto them.

Attending the weekly Salah ad Din Provincial Council meeting in 2004 or 2005. The provincial council chairman (seated beneath the flag) would be killed not very long after I left Iraq. The man I am talking to is my friend, Khaled, the provincial head of construction, I have no idea if he is alive. In my suit pants pocket would have been my .32 Llama pistol.

The Tim Hortons at Kandahar Air Base in southern Afghanistan. This was not your grandfather’s or your father’s war. May 2009

Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength. -Saint Francis de Sales

A lone Iraqi soldier stands guard as we drive by. I wonder if he is alive. 2004 or 2005, Tikrit, Iraq.

From 2004 in Iraq. By the time I left Iraq, for the last time, in the spring of 2007 such destroyed and damaged buildings were common.

My Marines train to go to Iraq. 29 Palms, CA, summer 2006. We had a lot of trouble getting enough ammunition to train, among other problems, as we prepared to deploy. Officers senior to me lied about our shortages and it took the personal intervention of the 4th Marine Division Commanding General for us to get the ammunition, equipment and facilities to be properly trained for Iraq. Semper Fi and fuck you 4th CEB.

Young men, and some young women, saw this view every day for a year. Every day. Sometimes their mission would be broken up by the vehicle in front or behind getting blown up. Sometimes it was their vehicle. Other times they would take small arms or maybe RPG fire, and, of course, kids would throw rocks at them. They didn’t speak the local language, watched as local people fled the streets when they approached, didn’t know the local history, believed Iraq was involved in 9/11, received letters and emails telling them their girlfriends and wives were leaving them, used toilets that overflowed, slept in freezing AC to keep away the mosquitos and the disease the bugs carried, and ate shitty food, but they had each other.

Nothing seems like it can be so simple, so pure, so honest or so beautiful after war. All the stories, tales and narratives don’t make sense anymore.

The banner from my appearance with Jonathan Landay on one of Bill Moyers’ last shows. September 2014

My good friend Shea. Race car driver, blues guitarist and Quaker. Our friendship began the same time as my first attempt at sobriety.

New Years Day, 2005, Tikirt, Iraq. With Suzanne, State Department, and Gail, USAID. Two of my best friends. Behind the tree is a $10,000 copy machine that worked for about a week before the dust jammed it. It was impossible to fix without a technician and Ricoh wouldn’t send one to Iraq, I called.

My cat. My pets have allowed me to renew relationships of trust as well as maintain a connection to the present. Two things that PTSD takes away from you.

With Bradley Walker at the Marine Corps Marathon in 2008. Not pictured are Brad’s two artificial legs. Brad lost his legs when the vehicle he was in hit an IED in December 2006. My vehicle had driven over that IED just seconds before Brad’s did.

Find it.

An example of a self-armored vehicle that we rode in until late in 2004. This wasn’t a vehicle I ever rode in, but it was similar to one I often rode in in Salah ad Din Province. Baghdad, Spring or Summer 2004.

In a new apartment, I conduct a Skype interview with BBC from my bedroom. Don’t let anyone tell you being an anti-war agitator is a path to financial prosperity ;) October 2013

My latest tattoo. From the Rumi poem Bewilderment, in Farsi, it reads: “I have tried prudent planning long enough. From now on I’ll be mad.”

Working for six dollars a day these young men made us look very good to the staff of the US embassy and to the politicians in Washington, DC. Progress was being made, we can attest to it because we are spending money…

Speaking against torture outside the governor’s mansion in Raleigh in 2014. North Carolina is home to an airfield utilized in the US government’s rendition and torture program. While clearly illegal, under existing local, state and federal laws, no elected or appointed official has had the courage, or political need, to enforce the law.

Afghan soldiers prepare to be inspected by the governor of Zabul Province. None of these soldiers were from the province, very few spoke Pashto and even less were Pashtun. August 2009

Young Iraqi men. How long did those smiles last after 2004?

Mona and Risahla. Mona was Shia, Risahla Kurdish. Mona treated me, every day, like her son for nearly a year. I have no idea if she is alive.

Downtown Hit, Iraq. One of the oldest cities it was a very, very tough place for the Marines and Soldiers stationed here. In every window there could be a sniper, every piece of trash could be an IED, and every person might be a suicide bomber. I have the greatest respect for our young men who lived here, for months on end, enduring that insanity. It is right to be angry at what we put them through.

Greeting Ambassador Karl Eikenberry alongside the Commander of 3rd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division. At this point I was the acting political officer for four provinces in northeastern Afghanistan. Spring 2009.

Parliament, Westminster and MI5 from RT’s London studio. November 2014.

My pills and my dog’s pills. We are quite the pair.

Combat wasn’t the only danger in Iraq. Accidents accounted for many, many American and Iraqi lives. While this incident was nothing more than a gigantic pain in the ass, such rollovers and submersions could be deadly. Heavy vehicles would collapse the farm roads, rolling over into a water filled ditched. The vehicle would sink into the mud. Encased, unable to open the vehicle doors and hatches, the crew would slowly drown to death. The other members of the patrol would be unable to dig out the vehicle and would have to wait helplessly for a recovery team while their mates died.

Our deck in Tikrit. We could eat from the date palms. Fortunately you could usually hear the outgoing fire from insurgent mortars before the rounds reached the base giving us enough time to get back inside. I will say watching incoming mortar rounds fall short and detonate on the Tigris was a bit thrilling.

My favorite dog we worked with in Anbar Province in 2006 and 2007. This was Cisco. He was very sweet and would climb in your lap. He was trained for both bomb detection and attack and was on at least his third deployment. Like many of our war dogs he suffered from PTSD. His teeth had been replaced with titanium. When a dog sinks into an arm or leg they will bite into the bone and not release. Regular teeth may break, titanium won’t. To know what we have done to these creatures in pursuit of our wars is to know what war is.

Flying to Baghdad in 2004/5. This was often very cold and loud, or very hot and loud, but much, much safer than driving back and forth on Route Tampa.

Oil floods the Tigris River in January 2005. This became more common as the year went on.

Speaking in defense of Bowe Bergdahl’s family on CNN, 2014.

Iraqi men play soccer on a pitch in Sadr City, Baghdad, May 2004.

Live in the present. It may not be Maui at Christmas, but find yourself in the present wherever you are. You owe that to those who can no longer do so themselves.

Testing suicide bomber detection devices on a very cold day in Massachusetts in January 2009. They didn’t work. That didn’t stop the vendors from complaining to Congress though.

Speaking to members of Congress in July 2010. Bob Pape of the University of Chicago is beside me.

The Golden Dome Mosque in Samarra. Revered in Shia society, al Qaeda would destroy its beautiful dome in February 2006. The civil war between Iraqis had begun well before al-Qaeda’s attack, so much that we began recording and reporting to Baghdad Iraqi civilian deaths in early 2005. That we didn’t do so for nearly two years into our war there tells a lot about us. In October 2004, Iraqi and American special operations troops stormed the mosque to root out insurgents. In doing so they destroyed the front door. We, the US, paid $100,000 to purchase a replacement. War is racket folks…

I’m on the left heading to inspect one of the berms we had built outside of Haqlaniyah, Anbar Province, Iraq, December 2006. As part of a larger campaign, Marines, Soldiers and Sailors, with Iraqi police and army units, led by Sunnis, and blessed off by local tribal leaders, began to clear the cities of the Euphrates River Valley leading to Ramadi. We constructed large berms around the cities, allowing only one way in and out. Marines and Iraqi soldiers went house to house and cleared the city. Local people gave up the al-Qaeda cells that were operating in their cities. They did that, not because they liked us, but because we had finally talked to and worked with their local leaders and limited the interference from the Shia government in Baghdad. We replaced the Shia leaders of Iraqi soldiers and police with Sunnis and Anbaris. With no need for al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) the Sunnis gave them up. What was fascinating was that the AQI cells were quite small. Violence dropped dramatically. It became so quiet it was scary. In the end it was politics that had them fighting us, simple, easy to understand grievances that our hubris, ignorance and arrogance would not previously let us consider.

One of my 7-ton trucks post IED strike. My three Marines walked away from this, but were never tested for traumatic brain injury upon returning home to the US. Upon getting home we did receive a one hour PTSD briefing from a kind person who had never been to war. We didn’t give it much mind. 2007

Ashore in Indonesia less than 20 kilometers from the equator in 2001.

Doing local news in Raleigh, NC. Local news allows you to reach audiences you wouldn’t ordinarily reach.

My Kurdish colleague’s family would host us. Here is a spread Karzan’s mom and sister made for me and my security team.

Those left behind. I was in Melbourne, Australia in 2012 to keynote an Australian national security conference. My talk to a couple hundred people was roughly well received by half those at the conference center in the Melbourne Cricket Stadium. The others, primarily from senior government, the defense industry, and those looking to join the defense industry or senior government was not so receptive. Simply put, my talk proffered the question: why is Australia jumping into the quicksand of Afghanistan (at this time the Australians were replacing the Dutch in Uruzgan province in southern Afghanistan).

My girl Sky. Please consider helping veterans by donating to any of the many organizations that pair veterans with rescued dogs.

An M1 Abrams crew in Salah Ad Din Province in October 2004. Note the green paint on the tank. A year and a half into the war and we still didn’t have equipment that was even the right color… During my second deployment, as a Marine, I came to greatly value the firepower of a tank.

My parents’ home in NC. As a 40 year old man I spent a year at their home, recovering and trying to get sober, completely broke and unable to work. I am lucky to have such a family, other guys aren’t. Without them I would have had to live in my car and I doubt I’d still be here today.

Sunni boys come running as we drive past. They always came running. It would scare the hell out of you because we were always capable of being attacked or hitting an IED. My stomach sinks now as my body and mind remember kids like this running towards us and being so afraid, so afraid, they would be killed.

Speaking with a local municipality engineer during post combat operations in either Samarra or Bayji, Fall 2004. I have no excuse for the sideburns. It was a tough time for us all…

An early appearance on CNN in November 2009. Prior to this my last appearance in the American press was in the Hunterdon County Democrat in 1991 for high school track.

I doubt that flag is still there.

For a long time I lost my pride in what I did as a Marine, of how my Marines behaved and performed. Through therapy I have come to put my emotions, memories and feeling in perspective, to understand what we did and how we acted, how we tried to be as moral as possible in an immoral position. I have the greatest respect and fondest memories of the majority of Marines I served with, particularly those I led. Our nation’s sins should not be ours to bear alone in our own mindful hate, anger, despair and sorrow.

FOB Danger, Tikrit, Iraq. In the hill on the left of the photo, beneath the minaret, were millennia old living spaces and caves, including an ancient pre-Mohamdian church. On the right, across the bridge, was a zoo the Baath Party had run for the wealthy and the privileged. Twice, on our patio, at night, I saw the lynx that was once caged in that zoo. This was an odd place.

Talking to peace people in NC.

In 2004 I sit next to a gentlemen who would be killed just a few days later. HIs funeral would be attacked and bombed, slaughtering family and friends mourning a good man, which he was, he was one of the few. Years later my own government would attack funerals with drones and airstrikes.

Second Lieutenant Hoh, 1998.

Stockholm, March 2011. The last day of a 17 day speaking tour through Denmark, Finland, Holland and Sweden.

A Marine gets ready for patrol. Anbar Province, Winter 2007.

A message supporting diplomacy with Iran from Spring 2015.

A view of the pool at CPA Headquarters/American embassy. Spring or Summer 2004.

A co-worker attracts attention while supervising day laborers on the CPA grounds. Spring 2004. Green Zone, Baghdad. Our women got lots of attention from local men not used to form flattering clothing.

Atop the Al Malawiya Shrine in Samarra. April 2005.

The view from a lavender farm, Maui, March 2015.

Boys in Sadr City, Iraq, Spring 2004. By the time our occupation ended, seven years later, many of these boys would, if they had survived, been part of the Mahdi Army. Note the open top Hummvee at the top of the photo.

A Marine hoists our colors over Um Qasr, Iraq the first day of the invasion in March 2003. I am seeing this from my desk at the Pentagon, upset I wasn’t taking part, afraid I was going to miss the war.

A cold and frozen day in NC in 2013. I look at this now and I see old sentiments about country, people and values frozen and dead in my own heart. Still there, still resident, but frozen and dead.

In Oslo, November 2014 with my very brave friends and heroes: John Johns, Colleen Rowley, Kirk Wiebe and Normon Solomon.

On the Pakistan border a local man tells us he has no need for any of us.

I can feel the heat, I can taste the dust, I can feel my shirt and my pants sticking to me from the sweat, I am cognizant of needing to keep drinking water and forcing myself to eat. I keep an eye on not getting ahead of my security and I have a body guard right near me. I search every Iraqi with my eyes and I wait for the sound of AK fire, the retort of an outgoing mortar, or the shock and blast of a suicide bomber. I’d rather die than lose my eyes or my balls, and I’d rather die than any of my friends around me. Sitting in Wake Forest, NC on November 19, 2015, those feelings are as genuine as they were over 11 years ago in Bayji, Iraq.

Beautiful American women visited us from time to time to tell us they were proud of us.

Camp Fuji, Japan, Winter 2001. Within the year al-Qaeda would let the US know the world had changed.

With Jesse Ventura on his television show in early 2015. I have appeared on a couple of occasions with Governor Ventura and each time I get many, many more views and comments than I do from traditional cable news media.

Downtown Qalat. A provincial capital, Qalat set on the main highway between Afghanistan’s two major highways. 14 years after the war began that highway is still not controlled by Afghan government forces. August 2009

Speaking with Chris Hayes on MSNBC the night the US launched strikes agains the Islamic State in 2014. A year later the Islamic State is only larger, stronger, and has a global presence throughout the Muslim world. In the past two weeks they have successfully inspired the mass bombings in Beirut, attacks in Paris and the downing of a Russian airliner.

Everyone of us behaved like a tourist at some point. I always thought of this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMFLZuAen0k

Destruction was all around us, including the buildings you lived next to. But, I guess, you become numb or you explain it away. This building had been hit by cruise missiles and airstrikes in 2003.

We couldn’t get bulletproof glass for our guard towers, equipment to repair our jammers to protect us from IEDs, or even cold weather gear that would not catch fire if our vehicles were hit, but we sure had a lot of candy! Charlie Company, 4th Combat Engineer Battalion, Regimental Combat Team 7, Anbar Province, 2006.

The joy I felt when I took off this bracelet upon Bowe’s release was nothing compared to the revulsion at the base and petty politically motivated hatred of Americans towards Bowe and his family.

Why every American wanted to visit Kurdistan.

A palace on FOB Danger. My home for nearly a year in 2004-5.

In northern Iraq, in Sulamania, a Kurdish city and province, we could drop our body armor and rifles, and walk the streets. Among the Kurds we were seen as liberators.

Dave and Majeed. Baghdad, 2004. Majeed and his family were fortunate to have been accepted into the asylum program in the US. A civil engineer, he now drives a truck.

Raleigh NC Town Hall w/ 3 US congressional reps and 2 state reps. Betsy Crites of NC Peace Action on the right. February 2012. I was newly sober.

My friend Sean delivers the flag to his father at Sean’s brother’s funeral.

With Tomi Lauren of the One America News Network, a network created because Fox News isn’t conservative enough…Go and speak to all.

Near daily view in 2004 and 2005 as we leave the FOB.

Palace living in Baghdad.

NYU Public Theater December 2010 with Alec Baldwin and fellow veterans.

At the infamous Green Zone Disco. It was as I would imagine a disco would have been like at a Howard Johnson’s in the late 1970s. Spring 2004.

They will be here long after we leave. Learn from them.

Speaking with Ammar and Damar in Tikrit shortly before leaving Tirkit to head home to the US after a year in Iraq. Upon returning home I would work as a consultant for the State Department on Iraq policy. Within a few months of being at the State Department, I had volunteered for mobilization with the Marine Corps.

Ladies and gentlemen, Consumerism has arrived in Baghdad. Please visit the al-Rasheed to shop and get the first tastes of a gloriously provisioned Iraq.

Brian, one of our Army Corps of Engineers civilians with some cash from one of my safes. Tikrit, Iraq, 2004/5

Afghan men and soldiers dance at an Afghan Independence Day celebration. The holiday commemorated defeating the British (multiple times) and the Soviets. My British colleagues were a bit unnerved by some of the referencing to killing Brits in their speeches and songs. Note the photo of Ahmed Shah Massoud in the top left corner of the photo. The ANA truly stood for the Army of the Northern Alliance.

With my friend Leslie Cockburn at her book launch in Fall 2013. Leslie’s novel, Baghdad Solitaire, is a vivid depiction of life in Iraq under occupation. So vivid I had to stop reading it for awhile.

Without makeup on MSNBC.

Your heart might be black and dead, that’s why you need to take something into your heart to help it heal. These two do it for me.

John Fields one of my PSD team leaders outside Samarra, April 2005. A Brit and a very, very good man.

In Crystal City, Virginia, 2008/9, at the Joint IED Defeat Organization, with former Marines and soldiers, engineers, and scientists to find technologies to detect suicide bombers and IEDs buried in the ground.

A young girl watches us walk by. If she is alive, she is now a young woman, having survived a war that has seen a million dead, millions wounded and maimed, millions displaced and nearly everyone mentally and emotionally traumatized. If she is still living in that house she is either under Islamic State oppression or subject to the abuses of Shia militias.

On my wall, and maybe, at some point, on my forearm.

Sitting alongside NSA whistleblower Tom Drake at the National Press Club in Washington, DC in 2013.

With one of my PSD teams above Sulimania, Kurdistan, Iraq.

Needless to say I root for the apes in the Planet of the Apes movies…

Men under my employ and pay work in Salah ad Din province in 2004. I ran a program with money from the Development Fund for Iraq, money that came from seized Iraqi assets, oil revenue and the UN oil for food program. The program was $50 million dollars and I received no written instructions as to its operation. When we needed more cash we would fly down to Baghdad and fill a duffel bag, or two, with cash from the vault. You can get $6 million dollars in a standard military duffel/sea bag. We would then fly back to Tikrit and put the money in two safes I kept in my bedroom. We would pay our contractors directly, while involving the local Iraqi government and ministries. Because we had no written instructions the program was fungible and we utilized the cash to employ public servants and conduct emergency post-battle reconstruction. I provided copies of my records to both contracting and financing officers in Kirkuk and Baghdad, as well as kept hard and digital copies in Tikrit I actually received special recognition for our work by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. It didn’t matter, we didn’t understand the politics of the war or the reality of being occupiers. And, of course, all the records were mysteriously lost as time went on. War is a racket.

Two of my NCOs grill for their Marines in between missions and patrols. I was blessed, company wide, with tough, smart and dependable corporals and sergeants. They kept their Marines alive. Rahwah, Anbar Province, Iraq, 2006/7

As the year went on we needed to add more blast protection to our house. Tikrit, Iraq, 2005

Ashore in Jakarta with Indonesian Marines in 2001.

Kurdistan. History matters.

With Andy, one of my platoon commanders. Haditha, Iraq, December 2006.

Saint Patrick’s Day 2010. I would wake up on my floor the next day, clean my self up and go and brief the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Ike Skelton. After briefing him, Chairman Skelton told me I was the first person to have ever come into his office and tell him things weren’t going well in Afghanistan. This was 2010.

My friend Dave stands next to one of the structurally decapitated heads of Saddam Hussein. Baghdad, Spring 2004.

When your mom has a crush on Chris Coumo you give him a hug and get a photo. Summer 2014

Off they go. They will arrive in a village with their guns and maybe some money, and then they will leave. They will do this for an entire deployment. Lagham Province, Afghanistan, 2009

There is a lot to fight for at home. There is really no reason to go abroad looking for monsters. We have too many here.

Mazin. Spring 2005. I still have the prayer beads you gave me my friend.

Members of the Ministry of Youth and Sport in Baghdad May 2004. Nada was one of our Iraqi employees. As I understand she is safe in the United States. Worrying what became of her haunted me for years. The gentleman to my right, Dave, was an executive with Nike who volunteered his time from home and family to try and do something good in Iraq. The gentleman to Nada’s left, Lynn, was an Army chaplain. A kinder, wiser and more gentle man I’m not sure I ever knew. RIP Lynn.

Speaking at the venerable Cleveland Club in the summer of 2011. I’m sweating out last night’s booze, beginning to feel needy for alcohol, and calculating how soon I can be at the airport in order to maximize time in the bar.

My favorite statue in Washington DC. Think big thoughts but remember it all may be absurd.

A joint Iraqi-US reconstruction team meeting. Anyone who tells you we weren’t doing counter-insurgency prior to General Petraeus’ assumption of command in Iraq in 2007 simply doesn’t know what they are talking about. Here we were utilizing millions and millions of dollars in American resources and money in collaboration with Iraq institutions, norms and personnel. Yet, every week, the insurgency grew stronger. A well financed and charitable occupation is still an occupation.

T walls and concertina lined the roads in the Green Zone (GZ). I was first stationed in Baghdad in spring 2004 before moving north to Tikrit, but I returned to the embassy roughly every 6 weeks. Each time I returned to the GZ more fortifications, barricades and obstacles had been constructed. Yet, inside the Embassy, assessments of Iraq were rosy…

Viva La Papa.

Always nice when one of your former Marines, who had a rough go of it on several occasions in both Iraq and Afghanistan, has a child. Semper Fidelis Ethan.

Laborers employed under my public works program. Monthly I would disperse tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to Iraqi communities in Salah ad Din Province to maintain public services. At its peak I had 3,000 employees. Sure, plenty of it got stolen, but the work did get done and it was done transparently and through the Iraqi ministries and local governments. The insurgency still blossomed bloodily.

Boys watch a grader at work in a town in Salah ad Din Province, Iraq. These boys are all fighting age now.

Marrying Bryce and Casey. May 2011.

With First Sergeant Scott Miller in a makeshift company headquarters in Haditha, Iraq, Fall/Winter 2006. No better friend, no better counsel than 1stSgt Miller. Semper Fidelis Scott.

Speaking with Lauren Lyster of RT News. I would not drink before doing media, but would almost always spend the rest of the afternoon and evening making friends with the pain in my head via alcohol. Washington, DC. Summer, 2010

Through the end of 2004 until I left Tikrit at the end of May 2005, smoke clouds from the oil fires of Bayji were near daily.

My first and, only, boss, Chuck, in Tirkit, posing in front of an armored Humvee on FOB Danger. The rumor was that that vehicle had belonged to Michael Jackson. I don’t know if that is true, but what is true is that the US government and its allies were incredibly unprepared for the war in Iraq. Over a year of believing it would get better in Iraq by politicians, bureaucrats and generals finally evaporated and in 2004 the US government purchased and requisitioned armored vehicles across the world to protect its people in Iraq. If I recall right this vehicle was delivered without the keys. Eventually KBR came and took it away.

With the incomparable Ray McGovern and two very bad ass ladies from Code Pink, Asheville, NC, July 2014.

My home and office. FOB Danger, Tikrit, Iraq, 2004-5.

With Daniel Ellsberg in LA. November 2009.

My friend’s patio in Maui. The kindness of friends has saved me.

RIP Danny.

Speaking as an alum at Tufts University, April 2011.

An aerial view of the Presidential palace in the Baghdad. It would serve as headquarters for the US Coalition Provisional Authority and then the US Embassy in Iraq.

Our house staff in Tikrit, Iraq. Mostly Shia and Kurds, what happened to them, particularly the women, haunts me and is a root cause of my PTSD and moral injury.

A young Iraqi digs a ditch in Salah ad Din province in 2004 or 2005.

Visiting Julian Assange in London in November 2014.

First Lieutenant Hoh with North Korea behind him in the winter of 2001.

Speaking at the Carr Center at Harvard University in November 2010. Yeah, that fish I caught was that big…

A market we drove by. We rarely, if ever, stopped at such places, none of us wanted to kill their business by scaring away the customers. Also, it wasn’t very safe for us.

A visit from an American and British delegation from Kabul. Qalat, Zabul Province, Southeastern Afghanistan, Summer 2009.

Meticulously researched and documented. One of the first books I suggest to anyone who is looking to understand the wars we are in.

Heading through a checkpoint in 2004.

Iraqi police move past us in October 2004. Riding 7 or 8 to an unarmored pick up truck these men were easily killed by insurgents. By 2005 the insurgents had begun placing canisters of fuel on the IEDs to create a fire ball to burn those hit in open vehicles and to scare those in the vicinity.

A medevac following a successful IED attack against American forces in between Tikrit and Kirkuk, 2005.

My favorite interview. From the Spanish newspaper La Pais. In it the correspondent refers to me as burly and affable. We did the interview in one of my local bars, I’m pretty sure the correspondent kindly substituted burly and affable for fat and drunk.

Steel from the World Trade Center at my father’s old church, the Church of the Good Shepard in Inman, Manhattan, January 2013.

Welcome to Samarra. October, 2004.

With my friend, General Abdullah. He wouldn’t wear the glasses because he didn’t want his enemies to see him in them. His enemies executed him in April 2011.

Iraqi kids giving us thumbs up and hoping for candy as we drive to Baquba. I’m not sure if these were Sunni or Shia children, but regardless, I can’t imagine they would be so friendly today.

What it looks like when some foreign ambassadors and generals visit your city. October 2004

Bryan and I with our largest single pay day. $3.3 million dollars. I was 31 years old, a Department of Defense civilian employee and a captain in the US Marine Corps Inactive Reserve.

We believed that if we showed progress to the Iraqi people, that if we delivered services, got the government working again, made their communities nicer and modern, that the people, including tribal leaders, would forget the occupation, acquiesce to usurpation, allow traditional rivals to profit, forgive our atrocities and mistakes, and not respond to the fear brought by jihadists. We were fools.

With Contessa Brewer on MSNBC in December 2010.

What it looks like when a rocket strikes next to your office. Our office was the second window on the left, close to the impact point. No one was hurt. I was eating downstairs in the chow hall, but Rita, our Christian-Iraqi secretary was in the office at the time. Whoever applied the mylar coating that prevented the window from becoming shrapnel saved Rita’s life. Baghdad, May 2004.

At Jalalabad Airbase in northeastern Afghanistan, Spring 2009. An old Soviet warplane lays broken, placed upon American HESCO, while nearby are the steps where Osama bin Laden announced his arrival in Afghanistan and declared continued war against the US. Bin Laden made that statement several months before the Taliban conquered this area; the Taliban effectively inherited bin Laden. Meanwhile, the man who actually brought bin Laden to Afghanistan, Abdul Rasoul Sayaf is today a prominent member of the Afghan Parliament who has run as a candidate for President. He actually won Kandahar Province in voting in 2014.

Damn right Snoopy.

It reads, in English letters over the Arabic, of course: “The United States Army in partnership with the Iraqi people for a better future.” I don’t believe that sign is still standing…

Pay day in Tikrit. We worked in cash. Things did get built and the money bought influence, but building things does not bring justice and influence is not loyalty. The insurgency got stronger. Note the black plastic bag, most of our contractors would walk out the gate of FOB Danger into Tikrit, with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in those black plastic bags, nearly the same time, every week. I never heard once of one of them getting robbed…

Christmas morning, 2004. General Abdullah, the deputy governor, and Sheik Naji, the Tribal Council leader, brought us the tree. They are both dead.

At the Marine Corps Ball with my company staff after my second Iraq Deployment. Finer men I’ve never known.

Speaking with my operations chief, Master Sergeant Kent Samuels, the best Marine I ever served with, on a clear and beautiful December day in Iraq. Two of my Marines would be severely wounded just hours after this photo.

The hardest thing of war: trying to be moral in the immoral world of war.

With my friend, hero and inspiration, Shea Brown at the 2013 Ridenhour Awards.

Afghan men greet us as we approach a school. Zabul Province, Afghanistan.

Two of my best friends to this day. Suzanne and Ryan. FOB Danger, Tikirt, Iraq, December 2004.

My friend Erica running the Marine Corps Marathon in 2008 with the name of my radio operator on her back.

While the rest of Iraq burned we had a pretty excellent pool party at CPA headquarters in Baghdad. Memorial Day, 2004.

A Bradley stands guard at one of our gates. I once saw an insurgent RPG team attack a Bradley at a checkpoint in daylight. The Bradely’s coaxial machine gun killed them very quickly. I watched it happen with a cup of coffee in my hand.

As a guest at a Bahai summer retreat in FL in July 2015. Although I am an atheist 6 1/2 days of the week it doesn’t mean I stop exploring, stop questioning, stop seeking and stop trying to understand. Isn’t that photo dramatic? ;)

Letting go is not forgetting.

Staff Sergeant Lange briefs his Marines before a patrol to find IEDs on a cold winter day in Haditha, Iraq. I love everyone of those kids. 2006

Getting ready to fly out. I was involved in a deadly helicopter crash in 2006, after that, whenever I flew, I was always one of the last to board and first to get off. Zabul Province, Afghanistan, Summer 2009.

With Karzan at a meeting of generals and governors in Sulimania, Kurdistan, Iraq, April 2005. Note the photo of Talabani and the Kurdish flag.

Gus. RIP my friend.

One of my tattoos. Originally the design was something my friend and engineer in Iraq, Ammar, and I came up with. Based on the idea, in 2004, that we were rebuilding the country. For my tattoo, a decade later, I replaced one of the shovels with an ax and added a drop of blood. It’s more honest that way.

My good friend’s brother’s grave in Arlington.

Teaching soldiers and civilians how we were doing governance and reconstruction operations in 1st Infantry Division’s AO in 2004. We were a model of success for the rest of Iraq, but the success was only on paper. Sure we built and repaired a lot, some of it competently (almost always when we worked through the Iraqi ministry and not Western contractors), but as we spent millions of dollars per week, worked to ensure elections would occur and to create an Iraqi government, the insurgency gained in strength every week.

Share this please.

We drive past a lone Iraqi policeman at his checkpoint. When an Iraqi police man or soldier was posted in the middle of the road, by themselves, we would refer to those positions as suicide posts. Here the Iraqi policeman is not wearing a mask or baclava indicating the area was somewhat controlled and sympathetic to Iraqi government and coalition forces.

Two Iraqi women walk along the Euphrates River in Anbar Province in 2006 or 2007. For most of our time in Anbar this was as close as many civilians would come to us.

Throughout the wars it was forbidden to have an American flag on our vehicles. The reason: because it would make the local people feel occupied. As if that heavy machine gun wasn’t enough to make them feel occupied…

Bradleys and a concrete box to hide in from mortar and rocket fire near the ancient Malawiya temple in Samara.

I wrote a short post on this photo earlier this year: https://matthewhoh.com/2015/02/27/smoke-from-bayji/

In Kunar Province in northeastern Afghanistan a US army captain explains the area to me. Spring 2009. At this point, the US Army was spending $100 million on construction and development projects in this part of the country (the four provinces of Nangahar, Nuristan, Kunar and Laghman, known collectively as N2KL), while USAID was spending an additional $100 million. There was nearly zero coordination between the the two organizations, although representatives on the ground did try and work through issues on a personal level. However, at regional command, Jalalabad, where there was no USAID presence, national command, Kabul, and strategic command, Washington, DC, there was no cooperation between these two organizations that were spending hundreds of millions of taxpayers dollars in this region and billions nationally. The lack of results was to be expected, not just in achieving success on the project level, but success in terms of winning the war. By the way, the fact that I am wearing a blazer, khaki pants and drinking a Sprite, while she has two weapons, is not lost on me.

The Australians remember that war destroys not just the bodies and soul of men, but animals as well. Bless the Australians for such a remembrance. Melbourne, Australia, 2012.

Sadr City in the spring of 2004. Well over a year after our occupation had begun this was the reality of the streets of Baghdad. A reality very distant from the conversations at the Embassy and in Washington.

I can go on for a very long time about Batman. A man challenged by his own society who destroys all around him in a quest for justice and vengeance, slaughtering his soul in a Sisyphean task of trying to reform the past and atone for his own inaction and culpability. Batman, like our desire for a just world, accountability and vengeance, is a heartbreaking tale of self destruction. At its worst it will manifest as a tragic self-immolation of our lives, our minds and our souls, and those belonging to our friends and family, at best it is Adam West riding a miniature elephant.

Don’t ever say our occupation wasn’t classy….

Paying villagers in Zabul Province, Afghanistan for the death of villagers by our Apache helicopters. August 2009. I’m standing, in the blue shirt.

Orange soda and snacks.

A market in Sadr City in either 2004 or 2005.

By all means, let’s make sure we have clean water to swim in. The Iraqis can wait. Also, why won’t the Iraqis just learn English already??? Green Zone, Baghdad, Spring 2004.

Contractors inside the Horsegate, September, 2004, Tikrit, Iraq. They are waiting to be paid, in cash, in amounts varying between a few thousand dollars and millions. This occurred weekly.

Tacos and the beach. Do things like this. Live, try and live, it’s all you can do. You know too many who can’t even do that anymore.

Prior to the Marines’ assault on Fallujah in November 2004, we conducted a campaign against Samarra in October. A shaping operation, the intent was to disrupt insurgent networks prior to the battle in Fallujah, while denying sanctuary to insurgents who would attempt to escape Fallujah. Here a column of fuel tankers awaits entry into Samarra. We did a massive Phase IV post combat reconstruction effort in Samarra intended to connect the local people to their government and convince to support us and not the insurgents. It didn’t work.

My friend Bryan with the Golden Dome mosque of Samarra behind him. Al-Qaeda would destroy the mosque, an important Shia pilgrimage and heritage site, in February 2006.

The 1st Infantry Division Headquarters in Tikrit, Iraq. Named FOB Danger, we were housed in an extremely large compound built by the Baath Party in Tikrit, Iraq. With dozens of palaces and villas, manmade lakes and waterfalls, and a zoo, it was an absurdist realization of a fever dream combining Disneyworld, Las Vegas, and the sets of Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra. The division headquarters, pictured here, was located on the cliff overlooking the Tirgis River where, according to legend, the great Muslim general Salahaddin was born. By the time I left we had a trailer selling Subway sandwiches, a coffee shop where Bangladeshi workers would make you a cappuccino and Zumba classes.

Hello from Oslo. November 2014. Working with fellow activists, many of them courageous and lawbreaking whistleblowers, from four other countries.

We often need to be refreshed. Rumi. 13th century.

My friend Durga. Baghdad 2004. We became friends after I let him use my computer to email his family back in Nepal. Kindness has its rewards. Durga was the Nepalese guard company quarter master. I never suffered without whenever I was in Baghdad after that.

Love and joy. Lost through war and PTSD, renewed through dogs.

I have a fantasy, I have always had it, of walking cross country. With PTSD it becomes a fantasy of escape, and, every now and again, I contemplate it. But I know it is just a means for me to try to run, to try to avoid and that, at some point, it would have to end. When does it end?

The Horsegate, Forward Operating Base Danger, Tikrit, Iraq. 2004/5 Supposedly Saddam’s carriage, pulled by the most beauteous white horses would enter and leave through here. I taught my friend Mazin how to drive in that parking lot.

On the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan in the summer of 2009. Honestly, I might even have been in Pakistan.

JFK memorial in Melbourne, Australia. It’s nice to be overseas and see a monument to the United States representative of something other than fast food.

Bob Herbert’s column of July 9, 2009 had a very deep effect on me when I read it in Zabul Province, Afghanistan that summer. It was an honor to be included in his book.

Afghan elders await a session with Americans and Afghans from Kabul to begin in the summer of 2009. Zabul Province, Afghanistan.

Speaking at the dedication of the Expose Facts’ Daniel Ellsberg billboard outside the US State Department in May 2014.

Young boys and girls in a school in Salah ad Din province in Iraq in 2004 or 2005. Sunni kids. How many are fighting for the Islamic State now?

Iraqi boys wave for the cameras. Taken over a decade ago these boys are young men now. If they have survived, if they are not refugees…I wonder about them. These were Sunni boys. Do they fight for the Islamic State? Most assuredly I believe they do. Our simple and chauvanistic tales and narratives of Manichean sides of good and evil do not withstand such knowledge of the Islamic State’s fighters as joyful youths. These boys weren’t made evil by their people, their faith, their culture, but rather by over a decade of war, suffering, hate, desperation and fear.

With Jess Radack, Tom Drake and Peter van Buren at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. If you don’t know who these folks are, how brave they are and how they have taken on the worst in our government, please google them.

As CPA transitioned to the US Embassy in the spring of 2004 I went north from Baghdad to Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s home city. Incoming (civilian) and outgoing (mostly military) members of the reconstruction and governance team in Salah ad Din province.

Somewhere some poor bastard has it worse than you. A Marine burns shit in Haditha, Iraq, December 2006.

As a member of the Secretary of the Navy’s office in the summer of 2003.

How I traveled. An armored Land Crusier, my cup of coffee and my trusty AK-47. I’d wear body armor, and if wearing a suit, would put my jacket over the body armor. I’d rarely wear a helmet and I would often have a small pistol in my front right pants pocket with an extra magazine in my left pocket. Sometimes, but not always, I’d have a bag of cash. My program was $50 million dollars. The most I ever had in my possession at one time was $26 million which I kept in my bedroom in two safes.

Dogs in Russia. The basic elements of life, including compassion and suffering, are not restricted by geographical borders or species.

Conducting post combat reconstruction operations in Samarra, October 2004. I had several hundred thousands of dollars in cash, plus several million dollars in contracts to award and restart. The army partnered with the Iraqi ministries to rebuild and renew services to the people. It was classic COIN and it didn’t work. This was over two years prior to General Petraeus and his COINdinistas arriving in Iraq to “win” the war. General Petraeus was in Iraq at this point, leading a failed effort to train Iraqi security forces, allowing open sectarian dominance in those security forces, and losing hundreds of thousands of weapons and millions of pounds of ammunition; all while penning op-eds for the Washington Post, informing Americans how well the war was going in Iraq and not so subtly encouraging them to vote Bush-Cheney in 04.

Tora Bora seen from Jalalabad Airfield in Spring 2005, Northeastern Afghanistan. These were the mountains that bin Laden and his few remaining allies escaped to in 2001. From here he escaped into Pakistan. When I took this photo in 2009 I thought what would have happened if we had got bin Laden in 2001. If we had captured or killed him in those mountains. How different would history be, how different our lives, how many lives would not be devolving in the ground, how many dreams and promises to love ones would have been kept? Over four years after killing bin Laden our wars continue. The same would have occurred in 2001. We were a nation bent on war and once entered into war, by petty men and women devoid of worldly, historical, cultural and religious knowledge, but conditioned to obey the campaign dollars and the public opinion polls., We always surrender our options and free will to the gods of war. The Romans and the Greeks named forces outside of human control as gods. Chief among the gods were Mars (Rome) and Ares (Greece). Such a god still exists as war, a force beyond human manipulation, control or understanding. Ask the dead in Paris, Beirut, the Sinai, Raqaa, Baghdad and Kabul if they disagree.

As if out of central casting, an Afghan village elder hears our latest take on a war he has lived through since the 1970s. Zabul Province, August 2009

Memorial Day party at CPA headquarters, Baghdad, Iraq, May 2004. I had been in Iraq for a few weeks at this point. While Baghdad was hit daily with car bombs we drank Amstel Light.

It’s hard to forget such a face. And with remembering comes wondering.

One of the many palaces and villas built by the Baath Party in Tikrit, Iraq.

A guard stirs the tea he made for me with the cleaning rod from his rifle. Qalat, Zabul Province, Southern Afghanistan, May 2009

My movement from Baghdad to Tikrit in June 2004.

DVDs, all pirated, and some of them porn. As the car bombs were rocking Baghdad and Sunni and Shia uprisings were shaking nearly every city, in spring 2004 I heard CPA senior advisors at a meeting discuss the prevalence of pirated DVDs and the need to respect the interests of Jack Valenti and the motion picture industry. I’m serious. Jerry Bremer could have been Moses, Abe Lincoln and Gandhi rolled into one and he still would have been a failure in Baghdad because of those who populated the CPA.

With my good friend Pete Dominick. Pete I hope you know how much your friendship means to me.

Young Shia boys gather outside their homes in Sadr City, Baghdad in 2004 or 2005. By now these boys are old enough to fill out the ranks of the Shia militias or the Shia dominated Iraqi Army. That is if they were lucky enough to survive the last decade. A decade that has seen nearly one million Iraqi deaths.

Speaking to an American financed Afghan television program are three Americans and one Romanian, translated by an Afghan though. We are telling the Afghan people why it is important for them to vote. August 2009.

When the ambassador shows up in your city you meet him at the landing zone with your corrupt governor, your non Pashto speaking army commander, and your KHAD (communist) trained intelligence chief.

With my good friend Jared. Jared’s sharing of his experiences going through some tough times was of unbelievable help to me as I began my recovery. Thank you Jared. Peace brother.

My friend. I don’t know if he is alive or dead. He liked my ties and kept his pistol in that man-purse.

Commemorating the compassion of a man and his donkey amidst the slaughter, suffering, insanity, and the profound and mean stupidity of the Gallipoli campaign in 2015. Melbourne, Australia.

At the announcement of the Afghanistan Study Group in September 2010 in Washington, DC.

With my good friend and liberty mate Scott Macintyre at Camp Fuji, Japan the winter of 2000.

Brits, Americans and one Iraqi, late summer 2004, enjoying some local Iraqi cuisine.

Heavy equipment from my engineer task force getting ready to drop and berm a city in western Anbar Province, Iraq in November 2006. My task force was composed of nearly 300 Marines, Sailors and Soldiers and 100 pieces of rolling equipment, including nearly 50 pieces of engineer equipment. I was later told I had commanded the largest Marine Corps engineer operation of the Iraq War. Within a few years I would not be able to hold a job for more than a few months at a time.

At an outdoor restaurant in the Green Zone. By 2004 Western staffers were unable to leave the Green Zone, safely, without armed escort, and going to dinner in one of Baghdad’s many restaurants was impossible. Rocket and mortar fire were common in Baghdad, so wearing body armor during a dinner out, in one of the restaurants and bars that existed within the confines of the Green Zone, was often seen as a minor inconvenience.

Speaking at a Washington, DC showing of Jeremy Scahill’s Dirty Wars in May 2013.

With Dylan Ratigan on MSNBC in December 2011 discussing the removal of the American forces from Iraq. My anger was at its peak. I remember struggling to maintain my composure as I asked Dylan who would be held responsible for the war, when we as a people would have the courage to face the wrongs, honor the dead and take on the villains. At this point breakdowns were occurring daily, my relationship was in pieces and the numbing narcosis of alcohol was the only thing keeping me alive.

Drinking and eating at the Green Zone Cafe in Baghdad in September 2004, obviously before the suicide bomber hit it.

Marrying my friends Dan and Marsha May 2013 in Maryland. Dan, a Naval officer, would shortly deploy. I can’t say I am prouder of anything more than the Marines I led in Iraq, but in terms of the best things I have done in my life, marrying my friends Dan and Marsha, and Bryce and Casey, are it.

That’s the capitalist spirit Kurdistan! Sulamania, Iraq, 2005.

My route clearance team. Anbar Province, Iraq, 2007. Their job was to drive the roads looking for IEDs. The two burst bombs on the side of the Buffalo indicate that the Buffalo was hit twice, I believe it was hit again after this photo. Other vehicles were hit far more often. I don’t believe any of these Marines were screened for traumatic brain injuries upon our return to the US even though some of them were in at least 7 or 8 IED strikes on their vehicles. I believe I personally was in about 10 convoys and patrols that were hit with IEDs, although, somehow, my vehicle was never hit, just those in front and behind me. Whether that was due to Fortune or dumb luck I don’t know. Not to be outdone, the other Marines in my company searched for IEDs and weapons caches with handheld mine detectors on foot. All of us, on multiple occasions, would dismount our vehicles and walk on foot in front of the vehicles looking for mines and IEDs, at night we would do it with flashlights.

With my good friend Pat, a former Army Ranger. This was the night before I made my first attempt at sobriety. The bar at the top of the W Hotel in Washington, DC overlooking the Treasury Building and the White House, January 31, 2012. The next day I would appear on Hardball with Chris Matthews on MSNBC afraid I would vomit on the set and desperate for an end to it all. Knowing hundreds of thousands of people were watching I decided I couldn’t take my own life and going on as I was was just too painful. I’m still alive.

In Norway.

Malaysia in 2001 with Frank, Bez and some Malaysian paratrooper friends. We got to go places that rich people pay thousands and thousands of dollars to visit.

Sulamania in Kurdistan. Unlike the rest of Iraq is so, so many ways.

When I started speaking publicly against the Afghan War, nearly five years before this interview, I couldn’t have imagined we would be debating war in Iraq again. September, 2014

Visiting Samarra to inspect post-combat reconstruction efforts, either October or November 2004. Note the camera in my left hand. Myself, US Army and Iraqi engineers would diligently photograph our work to document progress, account for expenditures, and illustrate/illuminate a victory narrative for the American command in Baghdad and politicians in Washington, DC. Of course, pictures will not explain the fear, anger and desperation of a people that feel usurped, occupied, displaced and living under existential threat from foreigners, religious extremists, and rivals within their own society, such as the Shia dominated government.

My friend Bryan and a translator confer with a local Iraqi as we conduct post-combat reconstruction efforts in Samarra, a city, 11 years later, that is still a bloody battleground. The man in the suit is dead. The man next to him was once kidnapped and threatened with beheading. Bryan and I had decided to use money we controlled to ransom him, however he was released. Whether he was actually kidnapped is something I could never completely determine, such were the alliances and personalities that existed in the midst of guerrilla and civil war, corruption, and collapse. The boy with the soccer ball…he would be in his twenties now, is he alive, a refugee, an amputee? PTSD, nightmare, depression, chronic health problems most definitely. Does he fight for the Islamic State now out of necessity, survival, hatred, faith…I don’t know, but I would guess, yes, it is very possible he does.

Our single largest one time payout was $1.16 million in October, 2004. Our man calmly put it his briefcase and walked out into Tikrit.

Thanksgiving aboard FOB Danger, November 2004.

The middle of the day sometime in 2005 in Tikrit. Smoke from the constant oil pipeline fires. In the spring the insurgents would seemingly detonate a pipeline nearly every morning, so much that the detonation, from over 20km away, would often serve as my alarm clock.

Paul Bremer transitions the Iraqi Ministry of Youth and Sport to Iraqi control in June 2004. The various ministries had been divvied up to various Iraqi political groups. In this case, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) whose militia, the Badr Corps, fought against many of my friends. With Bremer’s transfer of the ministry went nearly $20 million in cash, directly to SCIRI. $20 million bought a lot of AKs, RPGs and explosives in the summer of 2004…

Courage can be contagious.

War Resisters League. Photo from a Vice News interview I did while in London in November 2014.

At the Sulimania Palace Hotel in Kurdistan, January 2005 with my Kurdish engineer and friend Karzan. The Palace Hotel in Kurdistan was a mainstay for Westerners and foreigners in Sulimania. Able to drink beer in the hotel restaurant, use wi-fi and watch Seinfeld (subtitled in Kurdish) the dissonance in the realities of Iraq could be overwhelming. The Palace was the scene of a modern Great Game, with Americans, Brits, Russians, Turks, Chinese, Koreans and others filling the rooms. Many of them were oil and gas representatives, others were intelligence officers, and some were both.

The majority of Marines and Sailors I led waiting for the flight to take us home at Al Asad Airbase, Anbar Province, Iraq. About 20 of my Marines and Sailors had to remain in Anbar for a few extra weeks. That still bothers me. April 2007.